Thomas Chatterton's Art: Experiments in Imagined History 9781400871384

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I. Seven Early Pieces: 1763-1764
II. The Imaginative Matrix: The Rowley World and Its Documents, 1768-1769
III. The Rowleyan Works: Explorations in Heroic Modes, 1768-1769
IV. Satiric Worlds and Modes: 1769-1770
V. Imagined Places and Poetries: 1768-1770
Notes
Indexes

Citation preview

THOMAS CHATTERTON'S ART

EXPERIMENTS IN IMAGINED HISTORY

'Donald S. Baylor

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Copyright © 1978 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, NewJersey In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation This book has been composed in VIP Bembo Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and durability Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, NewJersey

Detur Dignissimis:

To Mary and Janet Taylor

CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION The Problem: The Integrity of Individual Works vs. Historical Coherence Major Theoretical Debts Aesthetic

Foundations

Historical

Method

Immediacies, Narrative

Sources, Influences

as Pope: Literary

For Publication: Flamboyant

10 15 16

19

Continuity

Satiric Experiments:

3

18

I. SEVEN EARLY PIECES: 1763-1764 Christian History, Lanx Satura, Fable The Early Achievement Surveyed II. THE IMAGINATIVE MATRIX: THE ROWLEY WORLD AND ITS DOCUMENTS, 1768-1769 The Insistence on Authenticity Free Fantasy and Exploitative Invention Changing Functions of a Changing Imagined World III. THE ROWLEYAN WORKS: EXPLORATIONS IN HEROIC MODES, 1768-1769 Native Epic: "Bristowe Tragedie" Four Experimental Epic Fragments The New Hero as Patron and Friend Lyric Celebrations of Traditional Heroes The Drama of Heroism Old and New The New Hero and the Use of Riches The Last of the Traditional Hero IV. SATIRIC WORLDS AND MODES: 1769-1770 Satiric Stances and Models Four Modes of Verse Satire Rowley

IX

Targets

Personal and Social

Religious

and Political

Insult and Anxious

Revenge

Targets Targets

25

29 30 38 44 44 52 74 79 80 86 104 107 114 143 159 170 171 184 185

192 204 217

viii

Freethinking and Love "The Art of Curlism" The Satiric Reverse V. IMAGINED PLACES AND POETRIES: 1768-1770 Ut Pictura et Musica Poesis U.K. Ossianic Pastoral Perspectives on the Heroic Imagined Worlds NOTES

Contents

232 243 260 262 263 273 284 311 313

INDEXES

Chatterton's Writings General Index

333 338

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The basic research and the first drafts of this study were com­ pleted during a year's leave from the University of Oregon, a year generously funded by a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. I thank Roland Bartel, Bertrand Bronson, Benjamin Hoover, Joseph Hynes, Wil­ liam Strange, and Kermit Vanderbilt for writing letters of support for various grant applications. I spent the leave in Abingdon, then in Berkshire—close enough to Oxford to allow the use of the Bodleian and the English libraries; I ac­ knowledge with thanks the kindnesses of their staffs. Abing­ don was the home of one of Chatterton's and Rowley's favor­ ite historians, Peter Heylyn. My major resource in that borough, aside from its pleasantness and beauty, was the good company of my neighbors on Pickler's Hill and of my companions at the Spread Eagle on Northcourt Road. Several expert friends read drafts of the book and showed me how it might be improved (i.e., shortened). For such learned help I am grateful again to Messrs. Bronson, Hoover, Hynes, Strange, and Vanderbilt, and I should, of course, hope that whatever praise or blame may befall the book will be shared by them. Sue Baxter, Candy Boyd, Sandra Jackson, Myrna Lassiter, Karolynn Lestrud, Diane Urey, and Betty Weaver typed sev­ eral early drafts, and Jean Andrews typed most of the final draft. I thank them for their important help. I was particularly helped and encouraged by Marjorie Sherwood of Princeton University Press, and I shall be fortu­ nate indeed if the book finds reviewers as careful and knowl­ edgeable as Princeton's once anonymous readers, now known to me to be Patricia Meyer Spacks and Alistair Duckworth. I am also greatly indebted to Virginia W. Morgan for the thoughtful and meticulous copyediting the manuscript needed.

X

Acknowledgments

The Clarendon Press has kindly granted permission to quote occasional passages from Chatterton's text proper and to incorporate into my narrative materials from the notes to my Complete Works of Thomas Chatterton: A Bicentenary Edition (Oxford, 1971). My largest debts of gratitude are to Joanne, Lee, Benjamin, and Matthew Taylor, who cheerfully rearranged their lives so that I might write this book. Eugene, Oregon August 1977

THOMAS CHATTERTON'S ART

INTRODUCTION Γ~

·~ν Γ-

Γ- .*.· Γ~·Γ·

Why do you think I date everything I do? Because it is not enough to know an artist's works, you also have to know when he made them, why, how, in what circum­ stances. Some day there will probably exist a science— let's call it the "science of man"—which will attempt to go more deeply into man by way of the creative individ­ ual. I often think of that science and I want to leave pos­ terity as complete a record as possible.... That's why I date everything I do. —Picasso, conversation with Brassai', 6 December 19431 There is still no clear understanding of why Chatterton's poetry should have caught for decades the imaginations of some of the most acute (as well as some of the dullest) minds in English letters. This book is a more elaborate attempt than has hitherto been made to explore his artistic achievement. It has been written when Chatterton's reputation is at a low point, but it is possible that this may be a propitious moment. Since Chatterton is no longer a cause, since the poets for whom he was a hero no longer dominate our skies, his own image and magnitude may now emerge in individual clarity, without borrowed lights. Though the positions, movements, and natures of planets have been deduced formerly from their influences, this particular planet is now directly available to disinterested scrutiny. Some of the causes of Chatterton's present low reputation can only be welcomed. He appeared among the English poets shrouded in both the Thomas Rowley myth he created and the Marvelous Boy myth fostered by his admirers: historical investigation has by now pretty thoroughly demolished both myths. The Rowley myth had its linguistic props removed within a decade of Chatterton's death by the researches of Thomas Tyrwhitt and Thomas Warton, but knowledge about fifteenth-century poetry and language commanded so

4

Chatterton's Art

little general awareness at the end of the eighteenth century and through most of the nineteenth that Walter Skeat's 1871 edition of Chatterton got broad recognition for doing a job that had been fairly adequately done one hundred years ear­ lier. The Marvelous Boy myth is, to an extent, still with us, but the realization is growing that the story of the youthful genius, born in poverty and before his time, who opposed the rationalism and materialism of his century with the proud in­ vention of a brilliant medieval world and a poetry to match it and who was driven by the literary establishment of his day to starvation and suicide, was a (perhaps necessary) fiction. Even the assumption that he committed suicide is now compellingly called into question. 2 Yet the righting of historical error is often not the end of a story, for error itself can be a particularly eloquent sort of evidence if we put the right questions to it. The commotion in lettered England for so many years over Rowley and the stubborn persistence of the controversy long after Warton and Tyrwhitt ought logically to have silenced it testify that something more was involved than questions of authorship, period, and authenticity. Though the poems were indeed Chatterton's rather than Rowley's, they were not, in an im­ portant sense, the eighteenth century's. Something new had appeared momentarily on the horizon of English poetry and the persisting wish to locate it in a then vague and exotic fif­ teenth century was a kind of recognition of its radical and challenging strangeness. The Marvelous Boy myth was another symptom of the same awareness, for in it the poet was made the proto-martyr of a new poetic faith and his sup­ posed persecutors—Horace Walpole and the rest—were fixed as the Scribes and Pharisees of the moribund orthodoxy he had challenged. The later responses of poets push the point still further. Blake and Keats, both defiantly defensive about Chatterton, insisted on an essential genuineness, a poetic truth in Rowley that rendered irrelevant disputes about historical evidence. In a copy of Wordsworth's "Essay Supplementary to the Pref-

Introduction

5

ace" (1815) Blake penciled, "I believe both Macpherson & Chatterton, that what they say is ancient is so," On the next page he wrote, "I own myself an admirer of Ossian equally with any other poet whatever Rowley & Chatterton also." 3 Keats dedicated Endymion to Chatterton, "the most English of poets except Shakespeare," and expanded this claim in a letter to his brother and sister-in-law: The purest English I think—or what ought to be the purest—is Chatterton's. The Language had existed long enough to be entirely uncorrupted of Chaucer's galli­ cisms, and still the old words are used. Chatterton's lan­ guage is entirely northern [i.e., not Mediterranean, not classical], I perfer the native music of it to Milton's cut by feet. 4 Wordsworth and D. G. Rossetti extended such claims to include Chatterton's modern writings and their defensiveness is seen in nothing so much as in their hyperbole. Crabb Robinson, cool from a recent reading of Chatterton, "asked Wordsworth . . . wherein Chatterton's excellence lay. He said his genius was universal; he excelled in every species of com­ position; so remarkable an instance of precocious talent was quite unexampled. His prose was excellent; his power of pic­ turesque description and satire great." 5 Rossetti, in a series of letters to Hall Caine, takes particular pains to set right another skeptical inquirer. Chatterton is in the very first rank! . . . He was as great as any Eng­ lish poet whatever, and might absolutely, had he lived, have proved the only man in England's theatre of imagi­ nation who could have bandied parts with Shakespeare. . . . Read him carefully, and you will find his acknowl­ edged work essentially as powerful as his antiques, though less evenly successful. . . . Strong derivative points are to be found in Keats and Coleridge from the study of Chatterton. . . . Not to know Chatterton is to be ignorant of the true day-spring of modern romantic

6

Chatterton's Art poetry. . . . Among the modern poems Narva and Mared [sic], and the other African Eclogues. These are. . . poetry absolute. . . . Among the satirical and light modern pieces there are many of a first-rate order, though generally un­ equal. Perfect specimens, however, are The Revenge . . . Verses to a Lady ["To use a worn out Simile"]; Journal Sixth . . . ; The Prophecy [probably not Chatterton's]; and the opening of Fragment ["Intrest" (sic)]. . . . You must take care to be on the right tack about Chatterton. . . . I must protest finally about Chatterton, that he lacks noth­ ing because lacking the gradual growth of the emotional in literature which becomes evident in Keats. . . . The finest of the Rowley poems . . . rank absolutely with the finest poetry in the language, and gain (not lose) by moderation. 6

Such defiant faith in Chatterton's greatness has not yet re­ ceived systematic critical investigation, though important ad­ vances were made in the later nineteenth century (with Rossetti's help) by Theodore Watts Dunton and have been made in the twentieth by Saintsbury, E.H.W. Meyerstein, and Bertrand Bronson. However, most study has dealt with his life, not his works. Before a systematic investigation of the works could be undertaken, two critical tools were required—a de­ pendable biography and a critical edition. The first was pro­ vided in 1930 by Meyerstein's Life of Thomas Chatterton (cited hereafter as Life). Benjamin Hoover and I attempted the estab­ lishing of canon, texts, sequence of composition, and major sources in The Complete Works of Thomas Chatterton: A Bicentenary Edition (cited hereafter as Works). 7 The present book tries to bring these researches to bear on the peculiar problems of a sequential critical history of Chatterton's writings. As I see Chatterton, three such problems must be dealt with. Because of the melodrama of his life and of the Chatter­ ton myth, the natures of individual works have hitherto been neglected; these must be accounted for in their own terms,

Introduction

7

and here there are many surprises. Much that he wrote de­ serves to be restored to the canon of English literature, to be read and reread by poets and other readers. Second, Chatterton is, like Keats and Coleridge, a poet of many starts and few finishes; to understand him fully, the larger tendencies of the many literary problems he set himself need to be brought out. Finally, though he profoundly influenced the poets of the nineteenth century and though the history of that influence can perhaps be written once his own achievement is assessed, he had, like other later eighteenth-century poets, his own par­ ticular essence. Students of the eighteenth century tend to see him as symptomatic of disaffection, Romantic scholarship as groping toward something later realized. However, Blake scholarship has shown us the importance of dealing with poets of Chatterton's generation in their own terms lest our large-scale historical theses distort them. My task then was to work out a method that could deal with all three problems— the natures of individual works, the overall tendencies of a very fragmented career, and the internal essence of an achievement rather than its consequences as rejection of the past or as augury of the future. A study restricted to the larger issues would leave the individual works in their two-hundred-year limbo. A sequential account of individual works with running assignments of praise and blame would miss the larger tendencies and would be tedious to boot. In the next section of this introduction, I shall explain the chronological blocking-out and the modular narrative that is intended to solve these conflicting problems. For it was in modes—that midregion of convention and expectation between chosen subjects and achieved forms—that Chatterton most consis­ tently set for himself his artistic problems and conducted his experiments. The history does not deal with all of Chatterton's writings. Many of them seem to me perfunctory—designed for this or that market but not properly elements in his artistic develop­ ment. Such are most of the brief documents manufactured for William Barrett's projected history of Bristol, most of the

8

Chatterton's Art

amatory verse written for others, and many works that are little more than reflex responses to the stimuli of the London literary marketplace. When a knowledge of such writings conditions our understandings of more important efforts, these lesser works will enter the story, though not for analysis. To those who may feel that I have, even so, dis­ cussed too many works and gone into too much detail I can only plead that I am attempting a literary history. Though I hope to preserve proportions related to artistic interest, I have not limited the history to Chatterton's best, his most influen­ tial, or even his modestly successful works. As literary histo­ rian I feel obliged to deal with any work that can help us un­ derstand his artistic development. Though there is some overlap, the first four chapters deal in chronological order with three distinct periods in Chatter­ ton's career. Chapter one is concerned with his 1763-1764 hymns, fables, and satires; chapter two with the creation of the Rowley world from the summer of 1768 to the spring of 1769; chapter three with the Rowleyan literary works that were born of that imagined world and its nonliterary docu­ ments; chapter four with the satirical modes worked from the autumn of 1769 to his death in late summer of 1770. Chapter five, on the other hand, deals with three modes that Chatterton first attempted during the Rowleyan year and continued to work after Rowley had been abandoned. These three modes might have been as logically treated after chapters one or three, but since this work is the major evidence for con­ tinuity in his development and in the quality of his writing, it seemed to me both accurate and more cheerful to deal with it toward the end of the history. Note, however, that we do not reach Chatterton's best works until chapter three. Readers not concerned with the early achieved poetic craft (chapter one) later put to such different purposes, or with the richly imag­ ined Bristol out of which the Rowley poems grew (chapter two) may wish to begin with chapter three, where the first major works are encountered. Once we understand the intrinsic nature of Chatterton's

Introduction

9

literary experiments in the various modes, we can begin to see what Blake, Keats, Wordsworth, and Rossetti were getting at: Chatterton is something more than a curiosity. His brief career is important evidence for understanding the larger movements of English letters in the later eighteenth century. Though the surviving evidence of his earliest works, the poems on which the first chapter is based, is clearly a small and only accidentally preserved sample of a larger body of work, certain patterns subsequently pursued are already es­ tablished in this earliest extant material. There is a penchant for the immediate and the conventional in both subjects—the sacred, local scandals, and psychological oddities—and models—The Book of Common Prayer and John Gay's Fables. In this earliest work Chatterton's ability to characterize in quietly ironic action and diction is already striking. Chapters two through five, by tracing the extended impact of these ties to the past, have implications beyond Chatterton and his writ­ ings. These chapters deal with matters for which there are abundant analogues in the larger movements of art and thought from the eighteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. Here we shall see the skillful poet of the everyday and the conventional moving in the direction of the heroic, the rhapsodic, the intensively subjective, yet never cutting his earlier roots. In Chatterton we have the transition from one sensibility to another—with constant interactions between old and new ways of thought—embodied in one brief career. Chapters two and three suggest answers to questions that might be asked of many later eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century figures. What, for these poets, was the peculiar fascination of the still vague medieval, an age seen by the enlightened as "dark"? What was at the heart of the im­ pulse, explicitly stated in the preface to the Lyrical Ballads, to see the everyday as marvelous, exotic, magically resonant? Further, what strange transformations does the towering example of Pope undergo in this medieval reincarnation as Thomas Rowley? For nothing is clearer from close study of the Rowley writings than that Rowley is imagined as the

10

Chatterton's Art

Pope who brought "correctness," dramatic sophistication, and a sense of artistic selfhood to a barbarous fifteenth-cen­ tury literature. Chapter four, which concerns Chatterton's contemporary satire, also looks both ways. It attempts to show what fruit grew from one branch of the Pope-Charles Churchill tree, a branch not so far from that which produced Byron's satires. It shows, further, that these satires are not unrelated to the same impulses that generated the Rowleyan heroic writings. The works studied in chapter five also demonstrate that reaches for something artistically new—the descriptive lyric, the puzzling Ossianic mode, the exotic pastoral—grow from roots not just in the imagined remote past, but also from what are usually thought of as "Augustan" modes of thought. In his boldest experiments Chatterton never loses his grip on aspects of those strong predecessors who must have loomed in the imaginations of his generation much as Yeats, Joyce, Eliot, and Auden have loomed in the minds of later twentiethcentury writers. The demonstration of these ties to a world against which Chatterton has traditionally been supposed to have been rebelling is, I believe, the most significant contribu­ tion this study makes toward getting a clearer picture of what happened to English letters in the last half of the eighteenth century. THE PROBLEM: THE INTEGRITY OF INDIVIDUAL WORKS VS. HISTORICAL COHERENCE When I began to think about this book, the task shaped itself as the writing of a coherent history of Chatterton's significant works that would emphasize the distinctive artistic nature of each. The works would be studied as acts of thought, as liter­ ary problems faced and solved, partially solved, or unsolved. The problems would be inferred from the works and from the conventions out of which they grew, as Chatterton per­ ceived those conventions. The method would entail, for each

Introduction

Π

work, defining the subject, the language chosen (with its prosodic characteristics or prose movements), the manner of pre­ sentation (argument, persuasion, drama, narrative, and so on), and the subordinate techniques of arrangement and viewpoint that had shaped that subject, dealt with in that medium and manner, into a literary whole. My theoretical as­ sumptions and my own experience as a writer had led me to look in each work for a shaping, organizing, informing prin­ ciple by which these various elements were selected and worked toward particular effects, a principle that, in turn, presented the author with contingent problems in dealing with each element. The emphasis, therefore, would fall on these major and contingent constructional problems. Such a method, however, did not in itself suggest a solution to the problem of coherence: an element must be found within the works that would make the history something more than the stringing of analytic beads on a chronological thread. A biographical coherence was not, it seemed to me, one of my options. Though Meyerstein's biography was indispen­ sable to my work, the framework of a biography, as R. G. Collingwood has noted, is not a development of thought "but of natural process. Through this framework. .. the tides of thought. .. flow crosswise, regardless of its structure, like seawater through a stranded wreck." 8 This double movement plagues literary biographies: narrative lines are constantly in­ terrupted by evaluative or philological statements about works, and yet such cross-tides can seldom be presented so as to show the direction of their flow, for the shape of the life itself usually works against this. I must try, then, to derive the coherence of my history from the works, just as we rightly expect the history of a soldier or a statesman, a philosopher or an economist to be organized along the lines of the practical or theoretical problems each chose or was forced to face. Two other possible solutions to the problem of coherence seemed to me to quarrel with my wish to emphasize the works as distinct artistic problems. In Chatterton, as in all writers, there are dominant influences from the author's char-

12

Chatterton's Art

acter and disposition, from the literary conventions he chose to follow, and from his experience as an individual and as a member of a particular society. Furthermore, as with all writers, apparently antithetical tendencies exist in his works. Both dominant influences and internal antitheses could be made to give the illusion of generating the works, but such procedures seemed to me causally fallacious. Also, they seemed to surrender from the start my wish to do justice both to the distinctive artistic natures of works and to Chatterton's thinking, shaping role as the artist constructing those works. Let me briefly illustrate these rejected possibilities. With any author influences are so abundant as to present exceed­ ingly difficult problems of discrimination and direction. I would clearly have to deal with multiple influences, whatever my method, but it must always be remembered—as we know from our own lives—that influences are multiple and that they are something used by us, not something that uses us. A par­ ticularly powerful influence on Chatterton has been traced to the fact of his father's death before the poet was born. 9 Many of his best works deal with fathers and sons or with characters in analogous relationships. Furthermore, his works change, sometimes subtly, sometimes radically, as he solicits the at­ tention of actual or potential patrons, men who promise to embody in some way the ideally beneficent, admiring father he so clearly imagined. When this search for a father or patron can be shown to have entered a work in some shaping way, it is essential to bring this into the discussion. Yet to make the search for a father the narrative line of the history would re­ duce the works to the status of illustration or proof, would entirely neglect many works, and would slight the artistic na­ tures of those works dealt with. Such a study might be a use­ ful history of a psychological tendency, but it would certainly not be a history of the works themselves or of Chatterton's artistic development. Similar drawbacks seemed to prohibit extracting the study's coherence from antitheses discovered within the works. The fact, for example, that Chatterton's works divide

Introduction

13

rather neatly and chronologically into Rowleyan and nonRowleyan writings and that the best of the former are heroic, of the latter, satiric—all of this must be treated as a matter re­ quiring explanation, as a problem of literary history, rather than as a dialectic somehow generating the works. The fur­ ther fact that the Rowleyan world seems to be predominantly the creation of Chatterton's imagination, whereas the modern writings seem predominantly modeled after works and au­ thors successful in the literary marketplace, ought not, I felt, to be built into an inner-outer conflict that should then be proposed as the ultimate cause of the works. Tendencies, no matter how pervasive, are not causes. Concentrating on ten­ dencies would, again, effectively deny the individual works their particular integrities and would shift my emphasis from the problems of their construction to a narrow selection of generative causes or of qualities in the finished works. It would, of course, be absurd to ignore either influences or broad tendencies in Chatterton's works, but I hoped to derive my principle of coherence from the nature of his artistic activ­ ity. These austere resolutions having been taken, I went about my preliminary tasks of searching out informing principles and contingent artistic problems in the serene confidence that such investigations would lead me naturally and surely to­ ward inner coherences in the canon. I was therefore surprised and dismayed to find few causal or even sequential connec­ tions among the multiplicity of principles and contingent problems uncovered. If, heroically resisting any favoredthesis organization, I fell back on mere chronology or on the simple fact of the fairly clear though frequently overlapping sequence of subjects—Rowleyan, satiric, market-deter­ mined—the history, though orderly, would be essentially an atomistic study rather than the narrative history of forms I hoped to write. The subjects of works are usually preconstructional—experiences and interests the author feeds into the work. Broad subject changes such as those just listed indicate major shifts of interest and artistic energy and con­ sequent changes in artistic problems at all levels; to that extent

14

Chatterton's Art

they would be germane to my aims. Yet if shifts of subject became the basic narrative line rather than a blocking-out de­ vice, the more artistically central constructional problems would be subordinated. However, subject shifts eventually suggested a solution to this problem of coherence. I believe that Chatterton's artistic development can best be seen as a sequence of problems lying midway between such literary givens (or, rather, "takens") as the subjects that caught his energy and the emerging shaping principles of individual works. Here, between tentative di­ rections and achieved forms, conventional possibilities in medium and technique and a consequent range of possible shaping principles, traditional or innovative, seem gradually to have presented themselves to his artistic awareness. I do not call these groupings of artistic possibility genres or styles because those terms have acquired meanings either too dis­ tinct or too discordant. The idea of genre has shifted radically from age to age. By Chatterton's day a hierarchy of interre­ lated kinds deduced, during the history of criticism, from broad similarities in subject, qualities, and manner was simul­ taneously recognized and subverted. The titles of most later eighteenth-century poems emphasize the recognition, their actual elements the subversion. 10 In our time we seem to have fewer genres per critical system but more competing systems, and hence more groupings of genres and more conflicting no­ tions of the essence of genre. Still, these notions are based on broad similarities of subject and of qualities in finished works rather than on the actual problems and principles that have shaped works. Style too can mean too many things: most often it refers primarily to qualities of the finished work— usually qualities of language, rhythm, expressiveness. It only hints at subject and almost never suggests structural and pre­ sentational characteristics. I have therefore called these artistic midregions in which Chatterton worked modes, trusting that this is a more neutral term, more likely to lead us to the prob­ lems of individual works, to give entree into his workshop. A generally chronological sequence of the modes Chatter-

Introduction

15

ton worked is, then, the ultimate narrative thread of this his­ tory. His shifts in subject signal major shifts of energy and consequent problems at all levels. These provide a blockingout device, a loose unity for chapters that then proceed to study the variety of modes undertaken and the even greater variety of individual works. The section titles within chapters will usually indicate the sequence of modes with which he ex­ perimented. In these sections I briefly define the particular modes and suggest his probable sense of them. Rather than attempting here an abstracted definition of this concept of mode, I refer the reader to the definitions themselves: the first (fable, defined in the first section of chapter one) may serve as well as any for testing the concept and forjudging its useful­ ness in suggesting both the groupings of traditional expecta­ tions and the range of constructional possibilities inherent in any mode. MAJOR THEORETICAL DEBTS My work with individual texts begins, I hope, with fidelity to them and thorough consideration of their sources and con­ ventional contexts. This goes back, in ways so ingrained as to be no longer clear to me, to the meticulous criticism and scholarship experienced in the seminars, writings, and thesis direction of Bertrand Bronson, who continues to publish ele­ gant, trenchant books and essays without suffering any of my own anxious wrestlings with theory. The theorists who led me to the method of this history may seem an odd pair. My thinking about literary history attempts to synthesize and extrapolate from, specifically, R. G. Collingwood's The Principles of Art (cited hereafter as PA) and The Idea of History (cited hereafter as IH) and Ronald Crane's theoretical and critical writings, but particularly his Critical and Historical Principles of Literary History (cited hereafter as CHPLH). 11 The rest of this introduction outlines my specific debts in theory and consequent method to these men. After completing the book, I found further support in Hans

Chatterton's Art

16

Robert Jauss, who seems to me to develop brilliantly the im­ plications of Collingwood's philosophy of history for the special problems of literary history. I found also that certain critics—Harold Bloom, Michael RifFaterre, Ralph Cohen, and William K. Wimsatt—were germane either to my method or to particular conclusions, reassuring me with sup­ port or raising challenging questions. Jauss and these critics will be cited from time to time, but it would be misleading to suggest that historical and critical approaches they might well disavow grew from or were formed in reaction to their writ­ ings. Aesthetic Foundations Literary history is explicitly or implicitly grounded in aes­ thetics. Collingwood's concept of art as imaginative creation that explores and expresses selected feeling by transforming it into comtemplable idea and his insistence that imaginatively alert audiences reenact that exploration and expression—ideas most fully stated and argued in The Principles of Art—are the most satisfactory explanation I have yet seen of the funda­ mental nature and human necessity of art, of its role as foun­ dation and accompaniment to all subsequent stages of thought, and of its workings in the minds of artists and audi­ ences. This theory, carelessly read, has been dismissed as "expressionist" or "self-expressionist"—positions Collingwood explicitly and clearly disavows (PA 315-318). At first glance, Collingwood's concept of art as expression through imaginative creation would seem to be irreconcilable with Crane's view of literature as the construction of artistic wholes having particular effects on audiences: Crane's hypothesized author is more manipulative, his audience more passive. Yet the two are dealing with distinct problems. Collingwood is trying to understand ultimate functions—how and why art in the largest sense works in the minds, first, of initiating artists and, then, of reenacting audiences. Helargely ignores the middle ground—the special problems of under­ standing the particular works that must be the meeting

Introduction

17

ground between these minds. Crane, on the other hand, is trying to understand this middle ground, the construction of these works, and he touches only lightly on ultimate collec­ tive significances. The common ground is suggested by Collingwood's insistence that the artist has, with each work, a problem of expression and hence of imaginative construction and by Crane's insistence that a work is best understood through its synthesizing principle and the contingent con­ structional problems of handling the various elements. For Collingwood, the artist "has encountered some experi­ ence that stands out. . . as significant or moving; its unex­ pressed significance lies on his mind as a burden, challenging him to find some way of uttering it; and his labor in creating a work of art is his response to that challenge" ( IH 315). Crane is more specific: a literary work is a concrete whole, or synthesis of parts . . . the generic character of which is determined by the fact that it is the product of an artist combining ele­ ments of speech. . . and elements of humanly interesting experience or thought by means of devices of technique and arrangement, for the sake of a particular organiz­ ing effect . . . on our opinions, emotions, or behaviour (CHPLH 12). I do not wish to minimize the potential disagreements, but these approaches need each other precisely because the one argues ultimates, the other analyzes the middle ground be­ tween these ultimates. Moreover, the two positions share the concepts of subject and artistic problems. For Collingwood the central problem is the artist's constant struggle to grasp and express what he feels. He addresses himself to retreats from and disavowals of feeling in himself and in his audience, and in this task the audience must col­ laborate actively if art is to realize its high, indispensable moral end: "Art is the community's medicine for the worst disease of mind, the corruption of consciousness" ( PA 217, 219-220, 251, 282-285, 336, and chapter 14 passim). 12

18

Chatterton's Art

Historical Method Crane and Collingwood are in essential agreement that the logic of question and answer, of problem and solution, is cen­ tral to any historical inquiry. Past acts are understood only by discovering the questions they attempted to answer, the prob­ lems they tried to solve.13 The idea is as pervasive in Crane as in Collingwood. Crane puts it most explicitly in his constant insistence on understanding the larger artistic use to which any source, influence, element, or technique is put. He notes also how frequently critics are misunderstood because of an as­ sumption that all of criticism is somehow a synchronic at­ tempt to answer a cluster of eternal questions rather than par­ ticular answers to particular critical questions (CHPLH 91).14 My own first step in this study, then, was to search out the problem for which each work was an attempted solution. Collingwood is perhaps best known for positing "imagina­ tive reenactment" as the only sure method for discovering these historical questions and problems.15 Crane independ­ ently supports Collingwood's concept by his reiterated insist­ ence on the necessity of reconstructing—from the work and from the contemporary artistic, critical, and social climates— the artistic choices that face an author in every aspect of his work.16 Collingwood's explanation of, and philosophical argu­ ments for, the possibility of imaginative reenactment demand a closer reading of The Idea of History than many have been willing to give. Since Karl Popper is a substantial philoso­ pher, his misunderstanding of the concept may be allowed to stand for the misapprehensions of many. Popper assumes that imaginative reenactment demands technical power, profi­ ciency, and intellect in the historian equal to the abilities of the historical agent. The act studied "may be an artistic or literary or scientific or philosophic achievement of an excellence which far exceeds the historian's abilities. . . . No historian of art can be a Rembrandt and few will even be able to copy a great masterpiece."17 Of course. But Collingwood never made such claims for imaginative reenactment, perhaps least

19

Introduction

of all in the realm of art. For him the work of art is a mental act (existing, as Collingwood had long before demonstrated, though with a different terminology, in Popper's "third world" of "objective knowledge"). The writing of a poem, the painting of a picture, and so on, are the artist's sensuous means for carrying out the imaginative act and the audience's sensuous means for reenacting. A good painter . . . paints things because until he has painted them he doesn't know what they are like (PA 304). . . . when someone reads and understands a poem, he is not merely understanding the poet's expression of his, the poet's, emotions, he is expressing emotions of his own in the poet's words, which have thus become his own words. As Coleridge put it, we know a man for a poet by the fact that he makes us poets. We know that he is expressing his emotions by the fact that he is enabling us to express ours (PA 118). Reenactment takes place where the work of art takes place— in the mind. The perceiver of the necessary sensuous accom­ paniment (poem, painting, score, performance) of the imagi­ native act need only be willing and knowledgeable to move from sensuous accompaniment to the more central mental world where the work lives. We do not understand Rem­ brandt by copying Rembrandts, but by imagining, by "read­ ing" his painting to reach that imagined emotion for which the painting was physical means. We know Rembrandt for a painter, then, by the fact that he makes us painters. Both Popper and Collingwood's lesser and less sympathetic critics consistently misread him when they part company with him over imaginative reenactment. Immediacies, Sources, Influences What, then, do we imaginatively reenact? We reenact the constructional problems of the artist, and we reenact them within at least two contexts—our own twentieth-century

20

Chatterton's Art

immediacies and, insofar as they can be reconstructed, the immediacies of the artist and of his first audience. Such im­ mediacies are both moral and aesthetic, as Collingwood in­ sists. He demonstrates that all acts of thought must live in immediacies and can be reenacted only in equally relevant (though not identical) subsequent immediacies. 18 Crane's monograph (CHPLH) is, thus far, the most systematic guide to reconstructing author's immediacies. He proposes a causal hierarchy in which "reasons of art" (the constructional causes of works) have primacy (CHPLH 61-105), and he suggests logical principles for conducting complex causal explanations ('CHPLH 57-61, 73, 80-82). 19 His loyalty to the work's integ­ rity and his desire for analytic clarity suggest, however, that constructional causes are rather neatly separable from per­ sonal, artistic, and social immediacies. This dams the neces­ sarily chronological flow from "preconstructional" causes to the work and thence to the reader, dams it in the interest of special attention to the work. Collingwood provides a neces­ sary corrective by suggesting throughout The Idea of History and The Principles of Art that, without dialogue between work and reader (with his immediacies), literary criticism and liter­ ary history are impossible. 20 Yet Crane also corrects Collingwood, since the necessary immediacies are never suffi­ cient causes: a shaping principle must catalyze the intellect and emotion of both artist and audience. Between the two theo­ rists, then, we shall find guidance in the search for both shap­ ing principles and their contingent artistic problems (Crane) and for the immediacies from which these principles and problems necessarily grow (Collingwood and Crane). Collingwood excludes himself, however, from helping with part of this problem because of his violent and unexam­ ined (yet explainable) rejection of technical theories of art. This position forces him to assert that "There is . . . a history of art, but no history of artistic problems. . . . There is only the history of artistic achievements" (IH 314). His own phi­ losophy of history denies this, since he tells us that history must be a reenactment of question, of problems. 21

Introduction

21

We must now bring these problems of immediacies of all sorts to the present case, Chatterton was a voracious, creative reader (and misreader) of poems, plays, every kind of prose, dictionaries, glossaries, histories, geographies, maps, archi­ tectural structures and ruins, even the streets and alleys of his neighborhood and his native city. He, in turn, was radically and creatively read (and misread) by several generations of major and minor Romantic poets (from Blake through the Edwardians) and, roughly from 1775 to 1875, by the belletristic world of England and the continent. The notes to Works demonstrate that, as in his Rowleyan language, nearly every feature of his writings can be traced to a borrowed source and that in using these features he nearly always disregarded their original contexts. This history can only instance a small part of this wholesale thievery, but it will attempt to show that he was a creative thief. Since it is doubtful that any other poet has been such a devourer of sources, such an elaborately devious obliterator of his debts, Chatterton might seem an almost classic case of Harold Bloom's concept of "creative misprison" and its ac­ companying anxieties, strategies, and disguises. 22 However, Bloom's theory is not, it seems to me, a sufficient explanation for the production of any of Chatterton's works; it will never get at his protean creativity and imaginativeness or at the or­ ganizing principles that give their particular integrities to each text. The texts are transformations arising, not from guilt and anxiety about sources and influences, but from the irresistibil­ ity of his creativity and its hunger for materials. He imagined poetic worlds; he filled them with characters, buildings, streets, events, documents, poems, drawings, trivia of every imaginable sort. The deception involved in making it all "medieval" works to reify the imagined world rather than to conceal his sources, and for his imagined structures he is in­ debted finally to no one. We might feel that he owed guilt to his sources, but he was blithely unconcerned about such debts. Collingwood, addressing modern artists and audiences,

22

Chatterton's Art

argues that such behavior is not pathological or immoral, but an artistic necessity. If an artist may say nothing except what he has invented by his own sole efforts, it stands to reason he will be poor in ideas. Ifhe could take whatever he wants wherever he could find it, as Euripides and Dante and Michelangelo and Shakespeare and Bach were free, his larder would always be full, and his cookery might be worth tasting. . . . Let all such artists as understand one another, there­ fore, plagiarize each other's works like men. . . . if he cannot improve on his friend's ideas, at least let him bor­ row them; it will do him good to try fitting them into works of his own, and it will be an advertisement for the creditor. An absurd suggestion? Well, I am only propos­ ing that modern artists should treat each other as Greek dramatists or Renaissance painters or Elizabethan poets did (PA 325-326). The passage might stand as Chatterton's artistic credo. Three brief instances, handled more fully in the history proper. In Ailla yElla is Othello, Birtha is Desdemona, Celmonde is Iago, and so on. The action too is borrowed from Shakespeare's play. However, Shakespeare's work is so radi­ cally altered by Chatterton's idea of heroism that Chatterton seems to be entering into a competition with his predecessor. I can show that Chatterton worried very much about the dif­ ficulties to which his concept of the hero brought his play and that he turned again, without perceptible guilt feeling, to Shakespeare's rhetoric to get him out of the artistic corner into which he had painted himself. A second instance is an almost unknown but startling work: Rowley (read Edmund Gibson) writes an elaborately ammended version of Turgot's (read William Camden's) imagined Norman "Discorse on Brystowe" (Gibson's 1695 edition of Camden's Britannia). The idea is bold: it "disproves" Camden's and Gibson's suggestions that there was no Bristol

Introduction

23

before the eleventh century. It establishes Rowley as a revi­ sionist, empirical historian living over a century before Cam­ den, over two centuries before Gibson. It gives to Bristol British, Roman, and Saxon pasts and, in doing so, establishes Chatterton's turf—RedclifF—as consistently prior to Bristol proper, across the Avon, in all facets of civic life. This is exu­ berant theft. One further instance of such borrowing. Rowley, his pa­ tron William Canynge, and the lesser poetic lights that—with these two—form a snug elite in mindless fifteenth-century Bristol and post-Chaucerian England are almost certainly the Scriblerus Club (Rowley being the Swift Pope) translated two and a half centuries into the past. In all three of these cases, as in the invented (but stolen) Rowleyan language, there is crea­ tive zest. Chatterton's first fight was for fame in the present (he was confident about his future fame) and for the reality of his imagined worlds: any scrap from the past was grist to his mill. With Chatterton it is not anxiety about influences but the wholesale, cheerful appropriation of sources that we must learn to understand. His works are so much a reshaping of sources that until we grasp their extraordinary variety we shall not fully comprehend the reshapings, with their new or­ ganizing principles. One needs guidelines in dealing with such a besourced and influenced poet, and I find them again in Collingwood and Crane. The first principle to be established is the concept of use in the understanding of artistic influence, collaboration, and theft. Though influence must be rejected as sufficient cause, it seems likely that a special situation obtained for lyric poetry in the late eighteenth century (its symptoms the reiter­ ated laments concerning the Death of Poetry, the Withdrawal of the Muses, the Retreat of Fancy, the unapproachably mythic stature of Milton, and so on). Wimsatt deftly suggests some of the sorts of justice that can be done these poets by a learned, sensitive reader.23 A helpful analogy occurs in Collingwood's argument that climate and geography do not de­ termine history:

24

Chatterton's Art

. . . that certain people live, for example, on an island has in itself no effect on their history; what has an effect is the way they conceive that insular position; whether for example they regard the sea as a barrier or as a highway to traffic. . . . In itself [their position] is merely a raw ma­ terial for historical activity, and the character of historical life depends on how this raw material is used (IH 200). To be sure, great poets and poetic traditions form audience expectations. Collingwood acknowledges this even as he re­ jects the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century aesthetics of artistic individualism. . . . a man, in his art as in everything else, is a finite be­ ing. Everything that he does is done in relation to others like himself. As artist, he is speaker; but a man speaks as he has been taught. . . . Even the most precocious poet hears and reads poetry before he writes it. Moreover, just as every artist stands in relation to other artists from whom he had acquired his art, so he stands in relation to some audience to whom he addresses it. . . . Like other speakers, they speak to those who understand. . . . All artists have modelled their style upon that of others, used subjects which others have used, and treated them as others have treated them already. A work of art so constructed is a work of collaboration. It is partly by the man whose name it bears, partly by those from whom he has borrowed. . . . If we look candidly at the history of art . . . we shall see that collaboration between artists has always been the rule. . . . Let painters and writers and musicians steal with both hands whatever they can use, wherever they can find it. (PA 316-320). This concept of collaboration brings the problem of influence into a broader perspective, that of a constant condition of art. In The Idea of History Collingwood, considering the wider question of influence in thought generally, suggests a reason­ able credo for those studying influence in such poets as Chatterton.

Introduction

25

It is the historian's endeavor to discover [a thinker's] problem that gives importance to the study of "influ­ ences," which is so futile when influences are conceived as the decanting of ready-made thought out of one mind into another. An intelligent inquiry into the influence of Socrates on Plato, or Descartes on Newton, seeks to dis­ cover not the points of agreement but the way in which the conclusions reached by one thinker give rise to prob­ lems for the next (IH 313). It is not difficult to extrapolate to the study of influence among artists. There is, of course, an inferior art that is little more than the sum of its sources and influences, which caters to the acquired tastes of a passive, bored audience: this is Collingwood's deadening "amusement art" (PA chapter 5 passim and 278). 24 What Collingwood and Crane insist on in considering influ­ ences is the active, initiating function of each new artist and the integrity in imaginative concept of each new work of art. These enable the artist to initiate, no matter how much he borrows, no matter how much he is influenced. Influences and sources are used for the new artistic purpose. 25

Narrative Continuity It is unfortunate that Collingwood does not explicitly address the historian's problem of finding a meaningful continuity, since in all of his works that are historical in structure he has the surest of narrative instincts. Generally he uses a how-wegot-where-we-are method, and this is of little help with Chatterton, who is now distinctly not "where we are." In "Princi­ ples of Organization" (CHPLH) Crane treats the problem at length. He notes the limitations of pure chronology, rejects "dialectical" narrative lines as destructive of the integrity of works, cites favorably narrative-causal organizing principles for their explanatory power, but urges finally an extension of the narrative-causal pattern in terms of

26

Chatterton's Art

(1) the successive shifts in the artistic or formal ends which writers of different times and in different places have pursued, (2) the successive changes in the materials through which the different ends were realized, (3) the successive discoveries of more effective or at least new devices and techniques for the achievement of the differ­ ent forms . . . and (4) the successive actualizations of all these changing possibilities in the production of artis­ tically valuable or historically significant works. . . . Crane further specifies that the first of these terms—artistic or formal ends—"is necessarily prior in importance," though any of the first three may be "the organizing line of change in a history." "It is appropriate therefore to describe this mode of literary history as the narrative history of forms" (CHPLH 37-38). He points out at length that unless these threads, with this particular priority, organize the narrative, "individual works tend to lose their integrity as unique products of art and to appear in the history only as causes, consequences, in­ stances, or signs of something else" (CHPLH 47). In giving thus briefly only the central positions taken in Crane's twenty-eight page analysis of the problem of organi­ zation, I have, of course, done justice neither to the richness nor to the cogency of his argument. I believe, however, that my emphasis has been fair: Crane wants us to keep the line of continuity within the area of the artist's solutions of construc­ tional problems. Preconstructional causes within and without literature, postconstructional effects, aesthetic or moral, may be brought in, but they must be subordinated to this central literary-historical task. What is most notably absent is something Crane might have learned from Collingwood—that history can only be the conceptual product of the time in which it is written. He ig­ nores the fact that literary history must be rewritten for every generation in terms of its own immediacies, and that the rich­ ness of the greatest works is thereby gradually revealed. Crane's argument constantly cites important literary-histori-

Introduction

27

cal tasks that need doing, but he gives the impression that once done they would be done for good and all.26 This, of course, will be any historian's secret wish, to have said the last word on his subject. Yet the more one reflects on how history must be written, the more one recognizes the deflating truth that this cannot be done. History will never be an aggregation of last words. Collingwood, on the other hand, noting that the historian can only understand the past from his own present and seeing art as an eternal fight against corruptions of consciousness, can imply a literary history narrated along the lines of a grad­ ually expanding human consciousness. Such a history is perhaps suggested by the last two sections of The Idea of His­ tory—"History and Freedom" and "Progress as Created by Historical Thinking." This clear difference, at any rate, from Crane stems again from the fact that Crane's final concern with literature is aesthetic, whereas Collingwood insists that the aesthetic is the moral. The presuppositions of both men seem absolute for them, and so some such disagreement about narrative continuity would seem inevitable. I share Collingwood's belief in the moral necessity of art, and so I sup­ pose that finally I would not wish to keep literary history quite so carefully within the aesthetic bounds Crane instinc­ tively prefers. I would hope, on the other hand, that I have been able to disclose hitherto unperceived aesthetic integrities in Chatterton's works, that I have not sacrificed these integ­ rities to absolute presuppositions of my own. Here I seem to sit on a methodological and moral fence. My narrative thread—Chatterton's exploration of and ex­ perimentation with a sequence of modes—could be argued to be an extension of Crane's "narrative history of forms," an extension to which Crane would have been forced had he ever attempted a sequential history of an author working in as many modes and creating as many forms as did Chatterton. Crane's proposed principles of continuity might work beauti­ fully in a sequential history of works in one genre or in related genres; even this, however, he did not choose to attempt.

28

Chatterton''s Art

Crane was, of course, a distinguished literary historian and critic as well as a theorist. He dealt again and again with indi­ vidual works, exploring their structures, examining their intellectual and literary sources, elucidating them philologically, but none of this bears on my problem of narrative con­ tinuity in this study. Nevertheless, the concept of modes attempts to include Crane's ideas about subject, medium, and technique as gov­ erned by form (Crane's "shaping principle"). The method embodies my belief that Crane's cluster must be worked out within the outlines of preliminary conventions as perceived by the author and, presumably, by his original audience, and that these modes both suggest possibilities for and set limits on the sorts of shaping principles authors have discovered. Such, at any rate, seems to have been the case with Chatterton: he experimented, innovated within conventional modes and it is the sequences of these modal experiments and his successive writing of individual works within them that gives this history whatever coherence is possesses. 27 As for the more comprehensive rewritings of literary his­ tory envisioned by Crane (andJauss), this history can only be, even insofar as it succeeds, a modest preliminary task dealing with a limited subject—a subject having the advantage for me that I know it as well as anyone. In carrying out this task under the stimulus and guidance of the concepts of Collingwood and Crane, I have not, I hope, distorted the thinking of men who have been so important to me.

Seven Early Pieces: 1763-1764 The literary evidence upon which this history must be primarily based has an odd chronological distribution. For Chatterton's tenth and eleventh years (1763-1764) we have seven works that are certainly or almost certainly his. Then, from spring 1764 to autumn 1768 we have nothing but one satire possibly his 1 —this despite anecdotal evidence that much satirical, religious, and love verse has been lost. Yet for his last two years, his late fifteenth year until his death two months before he would have been eighteen (fall 1768 to Au­ gust 1770), we would seem to have almost everything he wrote—over two hundred texts. This odd distribution is easily explained. From the fall 1768 appearance of the first works attributed to Thomas Rowley and Rowley's fifteenth-century circle, curious amateurs and scholars searched out (even stimulated the production of) the mass of Rowleyan works and documents. After his death, be­ cause of the bearing on the authenticity of the Rowleyan works, everything non-Rowley an Chatterton had written was sought. However, the case is very different for the years before Rowley. Unlike Picasso (see the epigraph to the Intro­ duction), Chatterton hadn't, apparently, the faintest interest in preserving his writings once they had served or failed to serve their immediate purposes, much less in bothering to date them. 2 His only early collectors were his mother and sis­ ter, they had only what he chose to show them, and most of that little was soon dispersed. We are sure, consequently, of only three poems before fall 1768, all of them probably copied into a notebook given him by his sister Mary and returned to her a year later "filled with writing, chiefly poetry." Those three early poems and various

30

Chatterton's Art

anecdotes led scholars to search Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, where Chatterton's "Bridge Narrative" had appeared in Oc­ tober 1768. For the years 1763 and 1764 they found three poems and a satirical letter that are almost certainly his. Of these seven pieces, the sure poems are "Sly Dick," "Apostate Will," and "A Hymn for Christmas Day." The four works probably his are "On the Last Epiphany" and three interre­ lated satirical pieces—"The Churchwarden and the Appari­ tion," "I've let my Yard," and the "Letter from Fullford, the Gravedigger." There are reasons both general and particular for devoting this first chapter to these early works. Major poets frequently master their craft when very young—Tasso, Pope, Shelley, many others quickly come to mind; but most of them live long enough to suppress their juvenilia. Chatterton's earliest works, preserved by accidents, suggest that poets begin with precocity at language, prosody, and the adaptation of immediately available structures. Though al­ most always highly imitative, they work inventively with contemporary modes rather then stodgily observing them. For Chatterton in particular, these early pieces will be seen to foreshadow technically the generally stronger poetry of his last two years. As for organization, the probable order of composition places the seven pieces in modal groupings that bring out common problems and contrasting formal solutions. CHRISTIAN HISTORY, LANX SATURA, FABLE Chatterton's first extant writings are modeled upon hintssubjects, styles, prosodic measures and patterns—taken from The Book of Common Prayer, the convention of "last day" poems, and John Gay's Fables. Throughout his brief literary life, his imagination seized upon whatever was most immedi­ ately to hand, and when we come to the Rowleyan writings we shall see that this was one of the most effective guardians of his secrets. Scholars again and again scoured the esoteric and missed his obvious, everyday sources.

Seven Early Pieces

31

The two earliest hymns face the problem of evoking feel­ ings adequate to their lofty subjects—Christ's first and last appearances in human history. The solutions are so different as to recall Ronald Crane's observation that the formal variety of the shorter poems we call "lyrics" is largely unexplored country.3 The structure of "On the Last Epiphany" is of a sort very frequent among "sublime" odes written around the year 1700: a rapid narrative of events in themselves awesome and presented, therefore, in heightened diction.4 As in many such poems—Dryden's "Songe for St. Cecilia's Day" and his "Alexander's Feast" will be familiar examples—the sequence is extremely orderly; there is nothing of the rhapsodic confu­ sion often encountered in sublime "Pindaric" odes. Nor is this orderliness to be taken as tight structure controlling in­ tense emotion, for the sublime effects are heightened by a regular, inexorable progression. In "On the Last Epiphany" the sky divides at Christ's ap­ pearance and sun, moon, and stars are astonished at his brightness. Lightnings flash, thunder shakes land and sea, the last trump pierces land and sea, and the dead in each— fearful sinners and rejoicing saints (note the continued pair­ ings)—await their dooms. The conclusion focuses the reader's attention on his own part in this judgment, for although we are not directly addressed after the first word ("Behold"), we have been carried through the awesome preliminaries of an event in which each must perforce be an actor. A convention­ al, "correct" prosody supports the orderly structure: Chatterton has chosen octosyllabic couplets rather than Pindaric ir­ regularity. This measure is used for the same subject in Swift's "Day ofjudgment" and Dryden's St. Cecilia ode. "A Hymn for Christmas Day," equally "lyric," has a very different structure. The state of mind is again conveyed in an orderly way, but the sequence is argumentative rather than narrative. A problem-solution sequence explores and logi­ cally evokes the appropriate emotion—the basic hymnic stance of humble adoration in which even the gift of praise can only come from the giver of all. This is done in a conven-

32

Chatterton's Art

tional song-hymn stanza, the line-by-line music unobtrusive and sure, the solemnity of the occasion maintained in a heightened diction. Chatterton's later lyrics of praise are usually addressed to medieval heroes or eighteenth-century girls. With the heroes we shall see narrative and apostrophic structures similar to that of the last day poem; with young women of Bristol and other nonheroic mortals, as in the Christmas hymn, some logical pattern—problem-solution, question-answer, com­ parison-contrast, exploration of paradox—is usually em­ ployed. 5 For the second group of early pieces to be considered, there are, if I have correctly hypothesized its nature, more topical than formal similarities to later writings. I hope to prove that his second published work is a satiric miscellany—a Ianx satura—of three pieces printed together in Felix Farley 7 Janu­ ary 1764 and clearly intended to be read as one—"The Churchwarden," "I've let my Yard," and the prose "Letter from Fullford." It is all but certain that "The Churchwarden" is Chatterton's. 6 The problem I raise is whether the three pieces act as one; if they do, and if they are Chatterton's, then his literary beginnings are much more complex than hitherto assumed. The three appear together, but as discrete works, in the "doubtful" section of Works (II, 688-691). But in Felix Far­ ley they were run together, the second and third untitled. All three are so highly topical that a brief account of the occasion is essential. Joseph Thomas, the churchwarden of Chatterton's parish and a brickmaker, combined religious and economic enter­ prise in a project to pull down the old Bristol High Cross in St. Mary RedclifFchurchyard, remove the turf, and level the ground. His ostensible reasons were convenience and the ap­ pearance of the churchyard, but local wits were quick to note the quantities of clay being hauled off to Joe's brickyard dur­ ing the operation. 7 On 17 December 1763 satiric items began to appear in Felix Farley. Since all three pieces in question are about the scandal, it will be necessary to establish intended

Seven Early Pieces

33

unity by showing artistic rather than merely topical connec­ tions. The three pieces deal withJoe's project from three points of view in three distinct forms. "The Churchwarden" is a fable in two consecutive scenes presenting Joe's dream of church­ yard wealth and his waking to the stern indictment of Con­ science. "I've let my Yard" takes us into an imagined future: it is the dramatic monologue ofjoe's deathbed repentance cast in stanzas that are best described as mock aria. The Swiftian prose letter from Fullford, the Redcliff gravedigger, shows that Joe's enterprising spirit has been quickly emulated at the lowest level of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The most obvious connections are that the mock aria would seem to be Churchwarden Joe's belated response to Conscience's accusa­ tion in the fable, that Fullford apes Joe's duplicity and enter­ prise, and that in all three pieces the project is seen through the eyes of participants—the mock hero or the imitating swain. The distinct structure of "The Churchwarden" itself will be discussed later with those of the other early fables. I am concerned here with its contribution to the total structure of the hypothesized satiric miscellany. Its two scenes constitute a psychomachy, the first exhibiting the vitality and precision of Joe's avaricious imagination, the second giving us Con­ science's deft anatomizing ofjoe's moral being. Yet it is, after all, Joe's conscience, even though he rejects its counsel, and both scenes are oddly sympathetic, even though they laugh at Joe. In the second section of the miscellany, the mock aria, our sympathy strengthens because of the urgent sincerity of his repentance. Joe has made more of a bargain than he had sup­ posed. In a punning recitative passage—"I've let my Yard, and sold my Clay, I And he, that likes to burn it, may—" the clay is also mortal and "he, that likes to burn it," turns out, in the further punning of an interpolated line of explanation that precedes the aria proper, to be the Devil: "A Lease granted, and Possession taken by another Baker." All of this gives

34

Chatterton's Art

rather a grisly double meaning to the piece. The comic per­ spective is not lost in either fable or aria; since the reader knows that Conscience's accusation was disregarded, the imagined deathbed scene still elicits punitive laughter, as though one were to say, "Joe will be burning day longer than he planned." Yet the sympathy is there too, and we shall see later that the deathbed thoughts of misers are as intriguing to Chatterton as they had been to John Gay. The Rowleyan "Gouler's Requiem," Chatterton's best treatment of the sub­ ject, is, like the mock aria, both comic and sympathetic. This later monologic "requiem" substantially strengthens Chatterton's claim to "I've let my Yard." There is a problem in assigning the letter from Fullford to any eleven-year-old, even Chatterton. It is unquestionably the master stroke of this Ianx satura, if such it be, and it uses so many of the ironic techniques of Swift's self-satirizing authors (Partridge, for example, the Arguer for Christianity, or the Modest Proposer) that it would be unthinkable to attribute it to Chatterton except for the near certainty that "The Churchwarden" is his and for the case that can be made for a three-part satiric miscellany. Fullford begins with professional pride in his precise knowledge of the chorography of his graveyard, "procured at the Expence of so many Years close Study and Application to Business." Joe Thomas's project has made a chaos that will breed trouble in the parish: "even the Poor love to bury with their Kindred: And all's but right that they should." The sense of injured professional pride and violated decorum are worthy a Peachum or a Lockit. Also, all of this is preparation for the postscript's cutting attack on Joe and, perhaps, on someone above him in the hierarchy. Still, the churchward­ en's entrepreneurship has elicited sympathetic vibrations in Fullford's otherwise indignant bosom, and he proves Joe's equal at pausible rationalization of greed. The churchwarden, wanting clay for his brickyard, had cited the "convenience" of a level yard. Fullford proposes quitting his "Business of Grave-digger," renting his yard (cf. "I've let my Yard") and

Seven Early Pieces

35

"for Decency's Sake" covering the nakedness of the turfless mold ("fat and good," presumably, because of what lies be­ neath) by planting it in potatoes and "some fine Beds of On­ ions, &c. . . ." "I see no Reason," concludes Fullford, "why I may not get a profitable Job out of the Church, as well as my Great Master—as I find that's the Game nowadays,—tho' De­ cency, Convenience, or the like, be the Pretence." The laconic "or the like" might have been inserted by Swift or Gay. If this prim double irony be Chatterton's, it must be ac­ knowledged that he never again did anything as substantial with the Swift-Gay technique by which the author's satire suggests itself constantly and insistently just beneath a comi­ cally plausible surface, coming to that surface—as Swift and Gay so often do—throughout the last long sentence, whose language represents exactly and simultaneously the senti­ ments of both the comically prim Fullford and the mocking author.8 How describe the form and impact of these three pieces taken together? There is movement—by narrative, mock air, and doubly ironic apologia—from the open comic-satiric, through the grimly punning comic-sympathetic, to the ironic-comic-sympathetic; from the clockwork of Joe's fearful greed, through the imagined urgency of his ultimate repent­ ance, to the pastoral clockwork of Fullford's complacent greed, the last steadily pointing up the ecclesiastical chain of command toward heights left open to the reader's imagina­ tion. The total satiric view suggested is one of mean, trans­ parently hypocritical self-seeking as the golden rule of St. Mary Redcliff parish. "The Churchwarden," read by itself, would have been rec­ ognized in the eighteenth century as fable, as would "Sly Dick" and "Apostate Will," and eighteenth-century fable is a mode rather than a form. The medium is assertively nonheroic—couplets usually octosyllabic with a diction from the middle to lower levels of everyday usage and sometimes a

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dash of mock-heroic. A strong moral cast brings action, char­ acter, and thought into focus, and this makes, in turn, for a tendency toward allegory, whether that of simple moral illus­ tration or of more specific topical satire. The tone is usually comic and ironic, though with a range from the quiet ironies of Gay to the harsh, often physical ironies of Swift's fables. The characters—animal, human, or superhuman—are viewed at the single middle-to-lower level found in the diction: style and characters are "levelled" by a strict decorum. The se­ quence is narrative, but the action need not, as we shall see, be the determining structural element. Swift, Prior, and Gay make effective use of the mode, but we find it also, with a more leisurely pace and with none of their encapsulating urge, in Butler's great mock romance. Always the mode deals in home—and homely—truths. It is perhaps to literature what Hogarth's engraving mode is to art. The comic-ironic charac­ ters are presented, often indirectly, in telling strokes of action, speech, or epithet. It seems probable that the quietly assured morality and art of the mode had a special congeniality to the desire for central, broadly human truth that has so often been attributed to the age. The traits of the mode by no means determine the structure of individual fables, though they set loose bounds within which certain structural choices immediately present them­ selves. In the didactic fable, narrative techniques are placed at the disposal of moral argument: the moral idea determines the choice of action, characters, and so on, as well as the se­ quence. Gay is the master at such didactic fables. In both the moral fables of his first series and the political allegories of his second, Gay writes narrative illustrations of his convictions. In mimetic fables, on the other hand, though the moral color­ ing is always strong, structure is determined by the human interest of action or character, one or the other being domi­ nant. Many of Swift's and Prior's fables are constructed as comic actions that determine, in turn, other functional and se­ quential parts. In a smaller group of mimetic fables, character analyzed determines action and the rest. Chatterton's three

Seven Early Pieces

early fables are of this latter sort. In each Chatterton has analyzed a particular Bristolian: the structure of the fable em­ bodies his analysis. The shaping principle of "The Churchwarden" has already been suggested in the course of the argument for the threepart satiric miscellany. Chatterton sees Joe's character as a facade of plausible religiosity over a robust and sleepless av­ arice, and this conception leads to the two contrasting scenes. In the dream we see the busy imaginations of avarice; the subsequent visitation by Conscience lays bare Joe's contradic­ tory moral carcass. The setting—a windy winter night—is used to frame and connect the two scenes. Once this economically done fable was published in Felix Farley it was broken down the middle to produce "Sly Dick" and "Apostate Will." Several complete phrases, the greedy hero with treasure vividly in mind, and a visitant fall to "Sly Dick." The idea of religiosity as cloak and occasion for gain falls to "Apostolate Will." "Sly Dick"—from the start less successful and, perhaps for that reason, abandoned after two scenes—makes much the more concrete use of "The Churchwarden." It is a story of surreptitious theft conceived in a winter's dream at the suggestion of "a dark infernal sprite" (clearly Dick's ruling passion), then successfully car­ ried out, though with what final consequences we cannot know. "Sly Dick" has none of the economy of means of "The Churchwarden," so if it were not for the even superior econ­ omy of "Apostate Will" we might be justified in assuming that in "Sly Dick" Chatterton had stolen from a better au­ thor, spoiling the goods in transit. The major symptom of failure in "Sly Dick" is that story gives way to prosody: non­ functioning words, lines, and repetitions are dragged in to make meter and rhyme come right. The problem in "Apostate Will" is to bring out the comicsatiric contrast between Will's constancy to his real religion, Gain, and his protean plausibility in the decorum of whatever sect offers the greatest opportunity for gain. To show this, Chatterton must keep both heart and manner simultaneously

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before us. The solution is primarily a matter of scene choice and arrangement and of the selection of an unobtrusive dic­ tion that shall strengthen but not interrupt the swift comic flow of the narrative. The action is managed with great skill: a four-line statement of Will's economic plight ("Just sunk in trade") and his resolution to couple his wagon to the rising Wesleyan star, a twenty-two-line scene with Wesley that gets Will rapidly converted and as rapidly fee'd, a ten-line summary of his prim Wesleyan decorum (his favorite text being "The labourer's worthy of his hire"), a six-line notice of an even better "place" in the established church and of Will's prompt resolution to reconvert, a twenty-line scene with the curate that secures the vacant place, and a fine epitome of the final state of his aifairs: "Accordingly he took the place, I And keeps it with dissembled grace." The tight narrative structure is strengthened and the essential contrast between heart and manner is kept steady by a diction half devoted to giving us the inner Will through the jargon of trade and place-seeking and half to the deft descriptions of Will's method acting. In two of the fables we have seen the hand of an artist who knows what he wants and has the skills to get it with a mimimum of fuss. The fable mode, apparently learned primarily from Gay, brings the character conceptions to life. We can see Chatterton's art stretching itself, responding at once to possibilities and problems. Taken together, the fables give us our first strong view of the literary workings of his mind, where subjects, character conceptions, scenes, lan­ guage, and narrative techniques are artfully combined for the desired effect. Oddly enough, four later fables, written in his seventeenth year, do not approach the artistic sureness of these first experiments in the mode.9 THE EARLY ACHIEVEMENT SURVEYED In these early works greed is essentially comic to Chatterton, and the comedy is doubled by the virtuosity of the greedy in concealing it. Duplicity delights him, especially intense, sor-

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did greed masked by elaborate respectability. Such duplicity has strong echoes in later works: his steady attacks on the Bristol middle class and on the middle and ruling classes of London will have this fascination with avaricious duplicity at their heart. This is not to say that Chatterton lacked sym­ pathy for the Joes, Dicks, Wills, and Fullfords of the world. Concealment is close to the heart of much of his own achievement—both the Rowleyan imposition so steadfastly maintained and the anonymity of the later satires. In most of his dealings with dissembling men he tends to see the world very much from their point of view, even while maintaining his comic-satiric vision of them. Meyerstein (Life, p. 46) notes parallels to "Apostate Will" in Chatterton's "Will," where he speaks of poems written in the style of "an Enthousastic Methodist" that he had intended to impose "upon the infatuated World as a Reality." Two weeks later, just be­ fore leaving for London, he told James Thistlethwaite that he intended turning Methodist preacher should his authorial schemes misfire. "In a dispute concerning the Character of David," the "Will" begins, "it was argued that he must be a holy Man from the Strains of Piety that breathes [sz'c] thro' his whole works." Yet Chatterton is "of a contrary Opinion . . . knowing that a great Genius can affect every thing." 10 He knew himself and had a comic sense of his own character: this empathy with dissemblers served his artistic intentions well. The shaping ideas of the fables work most economically from this empathy with duplicity. We have noted that in them character analysis determines form; in both completed fables plausible act masks greedy intent. Particular scenes and the sequence and background, bridging, and summarizing passages are so contrived as to bring out this contrast. The tendency to play major scenes against each other—the psychomachy of "The Churchwarden," the comic iteration of "Apostate Will"—underlines the contrast. All is structured with the utmost scenic economy. The subordinate techniques that further strengthen this bringing out of duplicitous char­ acter are skill with epithet, an ability to catch characters from

40

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within by giving us their dearest dreams or by personifying such character elements as conscience or a ruling passion, a feeling for the inherent comedy of recurrent postures under altered circumstances, and a sureness about point of view that allows omniscient distant views to be played against cinematographic zooms into inner character—a sort of moral close-up technique. When we note such empathy with duplicity and look for­ ward to its later manifestations, we may well begin to wonder whether the fervor of the two hymns might not be instances of "affecting." In both of them Chatterton's subject is the ardor appropriate to sublime events of Christian history, but might he not, even this early, be acting the "great Genius" who "can affect every thing," here breathing out convincing "Strains of Piety"? These particular attitudes are not found elsewhere in Chatterton except in the mouths of comic-satiric characters. Rowley's and Canynge's staunch orthodoxy, in works composed five years hence, is full of practical bustle and common sense; they are not given to stances of humble adoration.11 Whatever one decides about the genuineness of the feelings expressed, one must allow that the three quite distinct "lyric" structures—the sublime action of the last-day ode, the ter­ rified yet comic mock aria "I've let my Yard," and the prob­ lem-solving progression of the Christmas hymn—show a versatility at finding shaping principles within modes. In con­ struction too Chatterton is versatile early. Though there is no hint yet of a fascination with Bristol's past in these early poems, the gift for empathy shown in them will be central to the imagining of the Rowley world, which will have both its strongly evoked avaricious men and its open-mannered, generous heroes who are the other side of the coin of avarice. One might also suggest that the germ of Chatterton's later freethinking, libertinism, and political radicalism can be seen in this early skeptical amusement at avaricious duplicity among pillars of society, especially those in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

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In matters of medium Chatterton has probably been most cried up for the power and originality of his prosody. Though the originality has been exaggerated, his experimentation cannot be denied. The prosodic point about these early poems is that his ear seems to have been almost flawless from the start. The early prosody is not venturesome; it is, rather, a pellucid medium for the emotions being explored, imitated, evoked. Prosody, the mathematical part of poetry, is as inex­ plicable in its effects as is music, that most mathematical of the arts, which is also perhaps the most immediately expres­ sive. We have here yet another instance of the emotional power of order. Poets seem to be born with the ear for pro­ sodic order: Pope "lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came," and the prosody of his earliest poetry is also flawless and transparently functional rather than venturesome. The point to be remembered when studying a prosodic experimenter such as Chatterton is that the unerring ear, giving the effect of effortless musicality in both the octosyllabic couplets and the song measures, must be present before we can expect works in which prosody becomes a more assertive, less transparent factor. Chatterton's early diction, insofar as we can generalize from these scattered examples, is also sure and nonexperimental. Elevation in diction is easier to achieve than is con­ trol; Chatterton manages both in "On the Last Epiphany." He is not, however, within hailing distance of the imaginative powers of Dryden's wit-with-sublimity on the same subject in "A Songe for St. Cecilia's Day." The diction of "A Hymn for Christmas Day" is also solid but unremarkable apprentice-sublime. Early prizes for virtuosity in diction must be awarded to the three fables and "I've let my Yard," all four of which ef­ fectively use Gay's cool language of everyday thoughtful life. The wit in such a quiet medium is felt in subtle touches of comic precision—not expected and yet not startling—that draw from mercantile and moral sectors of ordinary human activity the revealing homely phrase and the unostentatiously

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elegant epithet. "Apostate Will just sunk in trade" catches Will's moral base in one homely line. "A small collection," "with looks demure," "His outward acts were grape and prim," the reiteration of the ambivalent word place in the last half of the poem, and the elegant effects of dissemble in "lifting his dissembling eyes" and in "Accordingly he took the place, And keeps it with dissembled grace"—all of these dictional niceties take us to the heart of the fable. In this respect too "Sly Dick" is weaker, though "And soothe with sleep his anxious breast" gives Dick another dimension, as does "in the morn with thoughts erect." In "The Churchwarden," "But still the pleasing Hope of Gain I That never left his active Brain" has a like effect. None of these touches demand our attention; they are small eloquences quite in keeping with the quiet texture that fable requires. We find the same sort of ef­ fect in Churchwarden Joe's deathbed aria: "I've pinch''d the Poor, I To swell my Store, I But those gay Days are gone." 12 All of these instance a quieter yet more impressive dictional command than is evident in the religious poems. In diction too Fullford's letter beats all other early pieces off the field, but because it is not certainly Chatterton's and be­ cause it represents a road not taken, it is inappropriate to make too much of it in this summary of skills and signs of the future. The letter's mastery of comic primness and of the double-voiced surfacing-satirist technique is not exploited in later work. Chatterton's choice of models is also strong evidence of his artistic sureness in these early works: The Book of Common Prayer, Swift and Dryden perhaps, but certainly, in the fables, Gay. With Gay's influence we see, simultaneously, that alac­ rity at catching techniques of all sorts so characteristic of Chatterton throughout his short career and the shaping power that, when he is at his best, does not mimic but rather adapts the techniques caught to the poet's own artistic ends. Poets learn poetry, apparently, as we learn speech: the im­ pulse to express drives us to models and to the assimilation of those models, without apparent effort, to the demands of

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what is to be expressed. The unusual element here is the choice of the quiet voice of John Gay. For it was not until Hazlitt that Gay was seen as something more than a poet "of a lower order." Gay's elegant understatement, his unostenta­ tious comic precision, and the complexities of his quiet irony do not seem to have recommended themselves strongly to the attention of any major critic between Hazlitt and Empson. Chatterton's attaching his early efforts to the sympathetic preoccupations and unobtrusive techniques of John Gay's fa­ bles and his so successfully making these his own are perhaps the single most impressive achievements of his tenth and eleventh years.

The Imaginative Matrix: The Rowley World and its Documents, 1768-1769 THE INSISTENCE ON AUTHENTICITY In autumn 1768, after the four-and-one-half-year gap in the evidence, we are faced with documents indicating that the Rowley experiment is in full career. The literary works will be the subject of the next chapter, but those works presup­ pose a larger idea—Chatterton's imagined world of ancient Bristol—an idea not in itself literature and never fully re­ corded. That imagined world and the documents written to authenticate it will be the concerns of this chapter. The reality of that world for Chatterton is poignantly shown in a remi­ niscence of his friend William Smith: He was always very fond of walking in the fields, and particularly in Redcliffe meadows; and of talking about these manuscripts and reading them there. Come, he would say, you and I will take a walk in the meadow. I have got the cleverest thing for you, that ever was. It is worth half a crown merely to have a sight of it; and to hear me read it to you.

When we were arrived at the place proposed, he would produce his parchment; shew it, and read it to me. There was one spot in particular, full in view of the church, in which he always seemed to take a peculiar delight. He would frequently lay himself down, fix his eyes upon the church; and seem as if he were in a kind of extasy [sic] or trance. Then on a sudden and abruptly, he would tell me, that steeple was burnt down by lightning: that was the place where they formerly acted plays. . . . ι

The Imaginative Matrix

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Our detailed knowledge of the existence, nature, and grad­ ual development of this imagined world must be largely in­ ferential. Other authors have imagined subsuming, engender­ ing ideas of this geographical-historical sort. Even if we take their literary works to be something like interim reports or partial representations, we find the larger ideas difficult to deal with, for they seem to grow and change with each work. Hardy's Wessex, Joyce's Dublin, Faulkner's Mississippi, Sin­ clair Lewis's Middle West, Blake's England, Georges Simenon's Paris are other countries of the mind. In them, the im­ agining of physical detail is intense and rich. When such ideas are pronouncedly historical, they seem to stand in many rela­ tions to the author's imaginative present—producing it, mak­ ing it comprehensible, judging it, giving it significance and moment. The obviously inferential nature of our knowledge of such imagined worlds tends to make us prefer the study of particu­ lar works, which seem to lie quite fully before us, available in their entirety. Yet our knowledge of particular works is also largely inferential. Without the active work of our imagina­ tions and the knowledge we so lightly carry, no work can be more than marks on paper, teasing hints of a meaning we know must exist. Our techniques of literary history and criti­ cism, the tools of our imaginations, are inferring tools. To study the larger ideas we must add to these traditional tools of the literary student something akin to that constructive imag­ ination that enables the historian to build lucid pictures of events not now present and not, when they happened, re­ corded—of such events, say, as the English settlements of Britain—from a diverse body of written, linguistic, and archaeological evidence. In the case of Chatterton the pressure to study the subsuming Rowley idea is particularly strong, since the idea involved, first, inventing a language, second, imagining in detail a physical city through over a millennium of history, and, third, composing authenticating documents. These documents considerably outnumber the Rowleyan literary works. Here 1 must pause to explain my own distinction between

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Rowleyan works and Rowleyan documents. A Rowleyan document is a composition whose major intended effect is the authentication of the Rowley world—either for Chatterton or for some presumed audience—rather than the achieving of literary expression. The literary works have, to be sure, something of this authentication in them, but it is never cen­ tral. Insofar as the documents contribute to the imaginative structure of the Rowley world and so express Chatterton's feelings about that world, they are also to that extent artistic; but this is not their major intent. They too have their forms, which can be elucidated, but their forms aim at authentication rather than at literary effect. It is the difference between a child's exactly describing an imaginary playmate's clothing and his telling a story about that playmate. Put another way, the works grow from the larger idea, whereas the documents buttress its authenticity. Since they are not centrally literary, it will not be relevant to this literary history to consider each of the sixty-odd doc­ uments. (Since there are documents within documents and groupings of related documents, this number is somewhat arbitrary.) I shall try to suggest their various functions, and I shall treat some of them in detail because of their demonstra­ ble importance to the literary history. They are frequently our best evidence for the idea out of which the works grew, and some of them exist in a kind of shadow ground between liter­ ature and imaginary history. In a psychological study they would probably be as important as the literary works, and for those who wish to consider them more fully than the pur­ poses of this study would justify, they are all available.2 The difference between Chatterton's Rowley world and such subsuming geographical-historical ideas in other authors is that Chatterton will have no truck with the convention of the willing suspension of disbelief. Not only the documents, but also the Rowleyan language and the imagined physical Bristol from pre-Roman times through the fifteenth century keep insisting to us, contrary to everything we know, that this city, these men and women actually existed. The tradi-

The Imaginative Matrix

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tional explanation—that Chatterton was a forger, a hoaxer given over to an elaborate lie—allows us to dismiss his insist­ ence on actuality but explains nothing. This evasion has the double disadvantage of not advancing our understanding of Chatterton and not corresponding to the evidence. It is about as helpful as saying that cave paintings show a belief in magic. More fruitful ways of thinking about Chatterton's insistence on the authenticity of his imagined world are available to us. R. G. Collingwood has compared novelists and historians in a way that can illuminate these special problems. Each aims at making his picture a coherent whole. . . . Both the novel and the history are self-explanatory, selfjustifying, the product of an autonomous or self-author­ izing activity; and in both cases this activity is the a priori imagination. As works of imagination, the historian's work and the novelist's do not differ. Where they do differ is that the historian's picture is meant to be true. The novelist has a single task only: to construct a coherent picture, one that makes sense. The historian has a double task: he has both to do this, and to construct a picture of things as they re­ ally were and of events as they really happened. This fur­ ther necessity imposes upon him obedience to three rules of method, from which the novelist or artist in general is free. First, his picture must be localized in space and time. The artist's need not; essentially, things that he imagines are imagined as happening at no place and at no date. . . . it was a sure instinct that led [Hardy] to replace Oxford by Christminster, Wantage by Alfredston, and Fawley by Marychurch, recoiling against the discord of topo­ graphical fact in what should be a purely imaginary world. Secondly, all history must be consistent with itself. . . . Thirdly, and most important, the historian's picture stands in a peculiar relation to something called evi­ dence. 3

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This instructive comparison begs a question that is relevant to our inquiry. Why did Hardy make it almost incumbent upon us to see Oxford in Christchurch, Wantage in Alfredston, and so on? He would appear to have felt the topographical and historical ties as strengthening in some way the impact of his novels. Still, however, the difference between Hardy's Wessex and Chatterton's Bristol is crucial, for Chatterton took his fictional Rowley world as historically and topographically true, and he meant it to be so taken by others. By creating the evidence and working to make it consistent, he is following in some special way of his own Collingwood's three rules of method. Chatterton must, therefore, be studied both as artist and as some kind of historian. His knowledge of Bristol his­ tory and of fifteenth-century English, quite inadequate by modern standards, was very rich by the standards of other Englishmen of his day, even educated Bristolians. It can have taken little more than a dangerous prevalence of imagination to convince him that both that world and its language had his­ toric validity. His letter to Walpole of 14 April 1769 argues quite sincerely, I believe, that what he had imagined was the sort of thing at least that the existing evidence obliged one to believe. Again, although we know the Rowley world to be unhistoric, it is, for another reason, quite unproductive to study it as in essence a hoax. Though Chatterton deceived many, de­ ception was not his ultimate goal, and the sort of knowledge we wish to gain about him argues for our studying him as art­ ist rather than as forger. Take, for example, the central figure in his imagined world—Thomas Rowley, his author. Would it not be as delicate a task to draw a precise line of demarca­ tion between Chatterton's Rowley and Sterne's Tristram as between Sterne's Tristram and the narrator of The History of Tom Jones? We would not willingly limit ourselves to study­ ing either Tristram or the narrating "Fielding" as exercises in deception. With Chatterton, as with Fielding and Sterne, we must address ourselves to the function of the imagined nar­ rator, to the quality of the imagined world, and to the special

The Imaginative Matrix

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language with which he brings that world to life in our minds. Yet we must also remember that, presumably unlike Fielding and Sterne, Chatterton was quite unwilling to view his imagined author as a fiction. He went about authenticating his Rowley world in three major ways—inventing its special language, imagining the ancient physical city, and writing the Rowleyan documents. All three ways share a common factor—density of imagining, something akin to what literary criticism calls verisimilitude. When we wish to persuade ourselves of the reality of imag­ ined worlds, of fantasies, or dreams, we thicken the imagin­ ing, persuading ourselves, as it were, by sheer weight of detail. The Rowleyan language is perhaps the most striking instance of this authenticating density. It is also, in a strange way, the most authentic aspect of the world. Chatterton in­ vented a special language of approximately 1800 words. Con­ trary to what has been hitherto assumed, this vocabulary is never, apparently, free fantasy. It is thoroughly true to what Chatterton knew of pre-eighteenth-century English, being collected entirely from what were to him authentic sources. The glossary in Works cites probable or possible sources for all but fifteen of these 1800 words, which suggests that sources will eventually be found for all. The language, then, was as authentic as Chatterton's detailed, though unsophisticated re­ searches could make it. Chatterton took the essence of fifteenth-century spelling, syntax, and word forms to be lawlessness. All of his language sources taken together as being equally "old" English—the dictionaries, the glossaries, Gibson's Camden, Leland, Percy, and the others (see Works, II, 1178-1179)—would certainly convey such an impression to any imaginative person not ex­ pert in language study. Consequently he can expand his basic 1800-word vocabulary simply by embodying this lawlessness in the spellings and inflections of words from standard eighteenth-century English. His proficiency with this in­ vented language grew steadily and rapidly throughout the Rowley year; to see this one need only compare "Bristowe

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Tragedie" with any of the later Rowley poems—say the Ec­ logues. The invented language grows, then, with the imag­ ined world. A second sort of authentication by density will be found in the Rowleyan drawings. All are boyish in their lack of skill and, frequently, in their ferocious intensity of detail. There are nearly three hundred of them extant (depending again on what one counts as a distinct drawing); eighty of them are printed in Works. The subjects suggest important aspects of the Rowley world. Nearly half are heraldic; the rest are draw­ ings of objects from that world—coins, inscriptions, ruins, churches, gates, windows, statues—historian's objects we might call them. Five are maps of Bristol, Redcliff, and Bris­ tol Castle and environs. It would be my guess that in these drawings and maps something analogous to the development of the Rowleyan language took place. Architectural and monumental Bristol—Redcliff Church and Canynge's tomb therein, to begin with—were as much catalysts and sources for the Rowley world as were old books and dictionaries. I would assume that something in a building, an exposed wall or foundation, the lay of a particular piece of land suggested to Chatterton most of his architectural fantasies. We know that he copied coins, statues, inscriptions from the engraved plates in his antiquarian sourcebooks. His drawings of Bristol Castle are particularly rich and detailed, and there were enig­ matic and tantalizing fragments of that fabric still to be seen in his day. The map on page 62 is particularly eloquent: hardly a street of Redcliff fails to receive its heavy quota of buildings and monuments, each eloquent physical testimony to a glori­ ous, actual past. The more important Rowley documents will be taken up in the next section in their order of composition so as to give some notion of the gradual development of the Rowley world. Here, however, I should like to survey briefly the kinds of documents Chatterton composed—another instance of authenticating by density of imagining. A smaller group of documents can be called for convenience of classification

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"primary," since they purport to be remains rather than dis­ cussion and interpretation by Rowley and others (the "sec­ ondary" documents). There are four letters from Rowley, fif­ teen (nearly all of them dated) from his patron Canynge, as well as brief extracts from others. These letters show the shared interests of Canynge and Rowley at different stages of their lives—first youthful high jinks and women; then poli­ tics, architecture, art, literature, and history; and finally reli­ gion and snug retreat from the world. They also surround some of Rowley's major literary works with documentation of the occasions for writing and of the reception given them. 4 The other "primary" documents are an inscription on the cover of a mass book, a fragment of a sermon by Rowley on the Holy Spirit in which he quotes from Latin and Greek fathers, nine legal documents (wills clearing Canynge from the Bristol legend that he was tightfisted with his sons, deeds of endowment of ancient chapels, proclamations by Canynge and Rowley in their roles as judicious, patient preservers of orthodoxy and public order), and an itemized bill to Canynge for various paintings and heraldic decorations he had or­ dered. 5 The "secondary" documents are an even more varied as­ sortment. There are two very lengthy genealogies; two long lists of artists, one with heraldic notes; historical sketches of English coining, painting, and Christmas games; and two cat­ alogues raisonnes of Canynge's collections of antiquities. 6 There are lengthy historical-topographical-architectural treatises on Bristol, Redcliff, and St. Bartholomew's Priory. 7 There are forty-odd (depending again on how such things are counted) historical notes of various length, mostly by Row­ ley, on coins, inscriptions, buildings, ancient Bristolians, monuments, churches, and heraldry. 8 There are lists of Bris­ tol and Redcliff officials starting in Norman times, two chronicles, and two biographical sketches. 9 Nearly all seem to borrow their forms from historical and antiquarian writers closely familiar to Chatterton. Each piece has its distinct purpose, but taken together the Rowleyan documents work

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richly toward the authentication of the imaginary world, the idea that engendered the poetry. Once again we are turned, I feel, toward Collingwood's comparison of the novelist and the historian. FREE FANTASY AND EXPLOITATIVE INVENTION In late 1768 there occurs a major shift of focus both in the Rowleyan literary works and in the documents. Chatterton turns from literary works that emphasize history, particularly Bristol history ("Parlyamente of Sprytes," for example), to­ ward those that emphasize character in action or argument and whose locale, even when Bristolian, is distinctly sec­ ondary to these central mimetic or didactic emphases (the first major work of this sort is Allla). This means a turn from Rowley as an historical personage and as historian to Rowley as artist. There is a related shift in the character of the docu­ ments. Until the end of 1768, the major documents tend to be exuberant, basically disinterested invention of "historic" de­ tail about Bristol. Though many of them later proved useful to William Barrett's history of Bristol, there is a playful fecundity of imagining in these earlier historic fantasies, as though Barrett's needs were merely catalysts for what Chatterton delighted to do. In contrast, the comparatively few but usually elaborate documents produced from late 1768 through the spring of 1769 have quite specific jobs to do: they are clearly designed to exploit the particular needs and inter­ ests of actual or potential patrons—Barrett, Henry Burgum, and Horace Walpole. In the earlier group, literature seems to be a byproduct of fantasy; in the later group, fantasy is used to promote literature. This shift of motivation and nature gives us a convenient and clarifying dividing point for an otherwise rather confusing sequence of major Rowleyan documents. The first document, dating probably from the summer of 1768, tells us a good deal about Chatterton's sources, his mo­ tive for and method of imagining, and his attitude toward the

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Rowley idea at or near the point of its inception. "Extracts from Craishes Herauldry" is a genealogical-heraldic catalogue in alphabetical and chronological order that purports to be taken from an imaginary work written by one of Rowley's presumed contemporaries. Its intent is to connect Chatterton, his friends, and his city with the grandest strands of England's past. Chatterton grants his friends, by fiat, ties to the noblest families, coats of arms, and ancestral links with great events. There is much playfulness and some low comedy in the proj­ ect, but it collapses before it has little more than started: ex­ cept for the family of his girl, Polly Rumsey, Chatterton does not get beyond the letter C. In the last entry under that letter— Cross —he travesties the whole idea of the piece, al­ most as though he were bursting into laughter in the midst of a solemn piece of playacting. One might guess that the proj­ ect began seriously enough, as though he were saying to his friends, "Our pasts were noble and our city was grand." The most and the grandest detail is bestowed on the Chatterton and Rumsey entries. However, the Cross entries are a list of silly, issueless men who have no connection with each other and who pride themselves on bogus family connections and bogus arms rather than on their own worth. This is surely comment on the whole "Extracts" enterprise, as is the whole Baker passage, which is susceptible to a bawdy reading. Chat­ terton was writing amatory poems for Baker at this time, and he is pretty clearly teasing Baker about his amorous pro­ clivities and problems. The method of "Extracts" is that used throughout the imagining of the Rowley world: the names are quite authen­ tic, drawn from histories and heraldic works; the connections to Chatterton, his friends, and his city are, on the other hand, strictly of his own invention. A final point to be noted is that the arcana of heraldry, so prominent in "Extracts," is clearly one of the early catalysts of the Rowley world, and we know that Chatterton was attempting to learn heraldic painting at this time ( Life , p. 70). The clear intent of the next three documents to be consid-

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ered, documents that are interrelated and that were probably written in October 1768, is to show ofFThomas Rowley as an historian of the same stature, methods, and interests as those of the great historian William Camden. All three, fur­ thermore, suggest the great antiquity of Bristol by inference from material objects—chiefly coins, but also weapons and documents, all of these in collections made by Rowley for Canynge. "Of the Auntiaunt Forme of Monies" is a learned sketch of the history of coinage in which the fifteenth-century priest quite remarkably appears to be as concerned with coins as was Camden's revisionist generation of Elizabethan histo­ rians. Also, Rowley's fifteenth-century facts and conclusions are remarkably like Camden's. This is less surprising when we learn, as H. H. Scudder noted,10 that Camden's Remains Concerning Britain is here Chatterton's main source. The sec­ ondary intent of the piece is to demonstrate by the incontro­ vertible evidence of her coinage that Bristol was flourishing in British, Roman, and Saxon times, whereas Camden was "of opinion that it rose in the decline of Saxon government, since it is not taken notice of before the year of our Lord 1063." 11 We shall shortly be concerned with a much more elaborate refutation of Camden's statement. In the same "Yellowe Rolle" we also have "Englandes Glorye revyved in Maystre Canynge beinge some Accomte of his Cabynet of auntiaunt Monumentes." Rowley, it emerges, made the collection and the core of the piece is a list of pieces already written by Rowley and his source Turgot and a promise of things to come (11. 14-27). Chatterton has insinuated into this passage a clever correction of an earlier historical blunder, using a technique that was to serve him again and again. The usual sequence is this: (1) a local monu­ ment or a rather vague printed reference gives him the germ for an historical fiction; (2) he creates the fiction; (3) he is con­ fronted with evidence contradicting his invention; (4) he con­ cocts an ingenious explanation in one of the Rowleyan docu­ ments referring to both historical fact and erroneous fiction as matters of fact; (5) he is thenceforth free to allude to either or

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both as equally established. In this case, the problem is Brightric (spelled in Rowley in almost every conceivable way). Chatterton had perhaps had a hint from a local tradition about Brightric's stone bed (11. 4-6 of "Englandes Glorye") and had found in Peter Heylyn's A Help to British History that a Brightric was king of the West Saxons 787-800. This led to a long story about Brightric's eighth-century palace in Redcliff (see "Discorse on Brystowe," II, III, which sections of that piece were written before "Englandes Glorye," see Works, II, 856-857, 866). Later he learns—either from Leland's Itinerary or Camden's Britannia—that the Bristol Brightric was a Saxon earl of about the time of Hastings. Chatterton covers his tracks by mentioning in "Englandes Glorye" both king and earl in a Bristol context. From that point he can do what he wishes with either Brightric in Bristol, and he uses both fre­ quently (see Works, II, 854). The "Purple Rolle" contains "Explayneals of the Annexed Yellowe Rolle." We do not have the sheet of drawings of coins to which this numbered catalogue refers, but Chatterton is clearly imitating here the pattern of the folio plates of Roman, British, and Saxon coins in Camden's Britannia and Camden's seriatim discussions of them in an accompanying text. "Explayneals" thus demonstrates Rowley's interpretive powers in detail and at the same time documents Rowley's claims about the antiquity of Bristol and Rcdcliff. The coins have been found, usually by Rowley, in particular Bristol and Redcliff streets, thus documenting them. Again Camden is being refuted: all but one of the coins are pre-Norman. Note also that while five are from Clifton and four are from Bristol proper, seventeen are from RedclifF, Chatterton's neigh­ borhood. All of this supports history we are about to learn from Rowley's "Discorse on Brystowe"—that RedclifFis the center of the earliest Bristol history and that the history goes back to pre-Roman times. The major points to be learned from the three pieces taken together are the emphasis on the existence of a pre-Norman Bristol based on the evidence of coins and documents, the circumstantial shoring up of works

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written, planned, or in progress, and—most important—the use of Camden as both model and adversary for Rowley. There is none of the joking of "Extracts": all three pieces are dense with portentous detail. The remaining four "free fantasy" documents were appar­ ently written during October-November 1768, and I deal with them in their probable order of completion. The first, "A Discorse on Brystowe," is a gathering and organizing point for all Chatterton had so far invented concerning the city; it enables him to launch confidently into new Rowleyan works with the basic details of the Rowley world clear in his mind. The other three handle more particular places and problems, but all four maintain the exuberance of invention characteristic of most of the earlier documents. A close reading of "Discorse," with a careful following up of notes and cross-references, is the surest way to get a feeling for the thickness of the Rowley world and for how Chatterton's mind worked in constructing it. In it a great mass of de­ tail on imaginary Bristol from pre-Roman times to Rowley's lifetime is brought into focus by the device of imitating very closely the texture and structure of Gibson's 1695 edition of Britannia. The major impact on the reader is to thicken and make consistent Rowley's pre-Norman (hence anti-Camden) picture of that history and, at the same time, to exhibit Row­ ley as an historian of precisely Camden's critical stance and method. These central aims, carried out within the form indi­ cated, encompass a whole series of tasks crucial to Chatterton in getting this invented world into some sort of order. The major tasks must be listed if the reader is to see the multi­ functional complexity subsumed under the one principle of organization. 1. Precise details extend the Bristol past back through Saxon, Roman, and British periods, and establish the location and sequence of the various settlements of these three peoples in the general area of the city (sections I and III). 2. Redcliff, Chatterton's neighborhood, is given the pre­ eminence over Bristol proper in nearly every facet of the

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city's history—conversion to Christianity, settlement, church building, bridge building, wall building (passim). 3. The history of monuments central to the Rowley world (RedclifF Church, the Bridge, Tower Harratz) is organized into a sequence of structures beginning in Saxon times (sec­ tion I). 4. Earlier historical mistakes about Brightric, Lamington, St. Werburgh, the Severn, and the Avon, and about the loca­ tions and names of fords, gates, bridges, and towers are ra­ tionalized, usually according to the pattern already noted in the discussion of Brightric (passim). 5. Canynge is established as the builder of St. Mary Redcliff as the eighteenth century knew it, and the history of four earlier churches on the site is given, thus making a church dedicated to Mary on this site the oldest Bristol church (sec­ tion I). The sequence of five churches also takes care of vari­ ous Bristol stories about builders of St. Mary who preceded Canynge. 6. The historical background for major works planned or in progress ("Parlyamente of Sprytes," /Ella, and perhaps "Goddwyn") is prepared (sections I, II, III). 7. In Turgot's sections of "Discorse" (more of him later) the history of Bristol is brought precisely to the point (mideleventh century) at which Camden begins his history of the city (section III). Meyerstein (Life, pp. 190-191 and note) was the first to note how much "Discorse" owed to Gibson's edition of Britannia. Though the major impetus is to refute Camden with a deluge of detail, the 1695 Brittania is nevertheless Chatterton's model for materials, style, and form. Gibson's Cam­ den begins (after the introductory section on the island as a whole) with Cornwall and works east and north, county by county, "in imitation of Strabo, Ptolemy, and the most an­ cient Geographers." 12 At the end of each of the county sec­ tions, which are themselves Gibson's translations from Cam­ den's Latin, we get Gibson's additions and emendations, keyed by footnote letters to Camden's text. "Discorse" be-

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gins with RedclifF, the southern part of Bristol, then moves north to Bristol proper. Rowley's "Emendals," keyed by footnote letters, follow the major sections, which are given in Rowley's translations from the eleventh-century Norman monk Turgot's "Saxonnes Latynne." Gibson's admiration for Camden's pioneering effort does not inhibit his corrective intent and his critical method. Rowley's stance toward Turgot is almost identical. Rowley's style, like Camden's and Gibson's, is atomistic—a stringing together of discrete histor­ ical notes. "Discorse" gives particular, detailed attention to matters left vague in Camden's account of Bristol—to the probable meaning of the name of the city, for example. The idea of a skeptical Rowley working from Turgot, a now lost Norman source, has the force of putting the asser­ tions made about pre-Norman Bristol quite beyond criticism, as though Rowley's skepticism had already taken care of monkish credulity in Turgot. The total effect here is to allow credence to Rowley's rather than to Camden's view of things. A secondary effect is to keep Chatterton, the only begetter, quite out of the picture. At the same time, the device puts Rowley forward once more as an historian of the fifteenth century of amazingy advanced methods and temper, a man subscribing to modern canons of historical inference. A more ingenious solution to what Chatterton wanted to do in this document could hardly have been found. In Works (II, 826-827) I attempt to show where Chatterton might have got the idea for Turgot. More interesting, how­ ever, is Turgot's function in the total scheme. Meyerstein states (Life, p. 109), "Rowley was to be Turgot's translator and emender in the fifteenth century just as Chatterton was Rowley's in the eighteenth. Behind Turgot, mercifully, we cannot go in this labyrinth of make-believe." This is not quite accurate: in "Discorse" Turgot too has his older authorities. As the imaginary source of an imaginary historian and (in the Hastings poems) a poet, Turgot steadily weakens the de­ mands for consistency and accuracy made on the fifteenthcentury Rowley. He enables Chatterton to make his history very much a matter of conflicting evidence and conflicting or

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at least differing interpretations. Rowley's attitude toward Turgot is thus sometimes a bit exasperated: "Turgotte soe putteth Seynctes and Kynges ynne hys Stories, I wote notte of ytte" (Works, I, 141). It should be remembered also that Chatterton was an artist in fiction. He conceived Rowley in intense detail-—detail that constantly reminds us of Chatterton him­ self. He created Rowley partly by looking within, and so perhaps Rowley needed his Turgotjust as Chatterton needed his Rowley. "Discorse" is a key to the total imagined world. "Hardinge," a brief document written about the same time, will enable the reader to see in miniature both Chatterton's exu­ berant way of solving a Rowleyan historical problem and his characteristic way of using his sources. Hardinge the Fadre of Fitz Hardynge han [had] fayre and Godeli [goodly] Possessyons atte Porteburie eke ycleped Porte Ceastre Fitz Hardyne gotte of Hen: 2d. a Baileve a Markette and a Fayre on Seyncte Decumbes daie beynge firste Mondaie yn Whytesonn Weke the whyche dyd abyde dureynge the whole Weke. Atte thys Fayre the Bayleve dyd doe hommage to the Abbat of Seyncte Augustynes yn Bristowe who dyd [went] dhidher wythe hys Broderen to Amounte of twa hondredth Boates the Hommage was doone bye spreadg. hys Scarlette Cloke at the Slyppe of Creochham wherebie the Abbatte dyd londe upon yette which hommage dyd entytule the Bayleve to hys Rule and an Hommage or Ore [oar] money of Shyppes. Leland's Itinerary had noted, "Ther is a Place almost agayne Hunge Rode caulyd Portchestar, where Hardynge and Robert his Sunne had a fayre Howse, and another in Brightstow Towne." 13 Harding and his son were major figures in early Bristol history, but no one has been able to identify Leland's Portchestar. Chatterton would know, either from his Sunday walks or from his reading, of earthworks, possibly Roman (suggesting "-chestar"?), at Portbury, which is roughly across the Severn from Hungroad. By equating "Portchestar"

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and Portbury, he solves the problem. Characteristically, however, he is by no means content to stop there. Taking Ice­ land's hint about Fitz Harding, noting that Fitz Harding's statue was on the College Gate together with an inscription that named him cofounder of St. Augustine's Abbey (later Bristol Cathedral), and finding on another page in Leland (I, 70) entries concerning both a St. Decun or Decumane (in Britannia Decombe) and a fair at Dunster near Watchet on Whitsun Monday, Chatterton invents a vivid ceremony with a scarlet cloak, thus establishing a total connection among the fair, Fitz Harding, Portbury, nearby Crockam (Creocham) Pill, Portchestar, St. Augustine's, and St. Decuman. The whole construct is so detailed and interknit that it would be exceedingly difficult to disbelieve it. "Bristol Castle" can also serve as a metaphor for the whole Rowleyan project. It is shaped as an antiquarian's notebook combining description, historical notes, and drawings to give a conception of how Bristol Castle, in Chatterton's day little more than teasing ruins, must have looked in its heyday. Chatterton builds up the description just as he builds the Rowleyan language—from quite authentic but thoroughly disparate scraps of evidence. It is another example of how, through this method, he was able to imagine the ancient life of his city both vividly and concretely. He had, as with the language, specific but contradictory sources on which his imagination might work. Out of all the confusing and con­ tradictory detail of the visible ruins and of William Wyrcestre's fifteenth- and Leland's sixteenth-century descrip­ tions, 14 Chatterton has constructed a comprehensible imagi­ nary castle consisting of an outer wall, an inner square castle with its own inner court, and a separate stronghold on the Avon bank. He has illustrated this castle with twenty draw­ ings. The relatively simple idea of the larger structures is em­ bellished, in the description and drawings, with a rich prolif­ eration of detail. It is again a document, puzzling at first, close study of which reveals much about the workings of Chatter­ ton's imagination.

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The third of the "Three Rowley Letters" is an antiquarian guidebook to RedclifF sent to Canynge's brother in Lon­ don. The map, p. 62, is a part of it. The guidebook is, in essence, historical notes on the chief buildings and ruins Chatterton imagined to have existed in his own neigh­ borhood in the year 1443, and as such it is a kind of summary of the history of Redcliff. The points of interest are taken up in the sequence in which they are listed on the legend of that map. This sequence would lead one on a walk around the pe­ riphery of RedclifF—north from St. Mary RedclifFalong RedclifF Street to the bridge, east to Temple Street (Paules Street on the map), then south along Temple Street to Temple Gate (Pauls Gate). Rowley then returns to the center of Redcliff to pick up points of interest not covered in the peripheral tour of the neighborhood. Of the buildings and gates discussed, nine are actual (though having, usually, quite different actual his­ tories than Chatterton gives them) and eight are imaginary. The account is much more detailed—probably a later expan­ sion of Chatterton's ideas—than that given in the first section of "A Discorse on Brystowe." I assume that the letter is the product of Chatterton's own walks about his neighborhood, walks in which he must have picked up and elaborated the least hint he could see of any ancient structure. I say this the more confidently because of a curious coinci­ dence. Rowley here speaks of "Canynges Place" as having a Saxon front toward the river, and in "Churches of Bristol" Canynges Place is said to have originally been "Seyncte Matthyasis Chapel," built in 867. Long after Chatterton's death, John Evans, in his Chronological Outline of the History of Bristol,15 published this note on the site: On digging the foundations for a floor-cloth manufac­ tory in 1803 or 4, Mr. Birtill found an arched subterra­ nean passage leading from the Hall, and a row of Anglo-Saxon columns, forming the base of the exterior western front of the premises, facing the river, upon Redcliffloack.

Redcliff, Chatterton's Neighborhood, as Imagined in Rowley's Day From British Museum Add. MS 5766B, f. 38r. His legend reads 1. Redclift Churche 2. Lesser SeyncteJohnes 3. Redclifte Gate 4. St. Catharines Chapele 5. St. Martins 6. Canyng's Place 7. Canyngs little 8. Thomas Minster and Cemetrie 9. Gods House 10. St. Eltwards Chapel 11. Erles House 12. St. Pauls 13. Greeter St. Johns 14. Pauls Gate 15. Byrtonnes Almeshous aa. Seynctes Lane bb. Canynges long way. c. Long rowe als Buttolphs rowe. Of the structures mentioned, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 have no historical basis. For the text of the Rowleyan letter that ac­ companies this map, see Works, 1, 136-42 and II, 897-903. The top of the map is, roughly, south; so the course of the Avon west of RedclifF is indicated on the right. Bristol Bridge is drawn in at bottom right. The Avon would, then, continue along the bottom of the map and up the left side, breaking off thence to the east toward Keynsham and Bath.

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Is it not probable that Chatterton rummaged in old buildings in RedclifF and that he found in various places just such re­ mains, easily imagined to be the ruins of churches, chapels, and the rest? However he arrived at his imaginings, the letter is again vivid evidence of the physical past he wished so avidly to give to his own neighborhood. He seized every hint at the rich past he was so sure lay beneath its eighteenthcentury present. "The Rolle of Seyncte Bartlemeweis Priorie," the last of the October-November 1768 documents to be considered, is the first in which ulterior motive clearly takes over from the free invention of the earlier documents. It is a jarring work in another way, for while it is again built on the CamdenGibson pattern, Rowley is here playing Camden, while Chatterton—speaking in the persona of a skeptical, Olym­ pian, jocular, sometimes cynical eighteenth-century anti­ quarian—plays the emending Gibson. He is cultivating the pose he undoubtedly took with Barrett, George Catcott, and the other local amateur antiquaries, but the pose sorts oddly with the spirit of the Rowley world. Also, this is the first time Chatterton himself has broken into that world except for the sort of brief explanatory or encomiastic notes we shall see in "Bristowe Tragedie." There the notes are very much in the background; here they easily dominate—in tone, bulk, and organization—Rowley's rather disjointed and skeletal basic text. That this effect is quite intentional we know even from the physical manuscript, which has been ruled before compo­ sition so that the notes will clearly dominate the text. Despite all these characteristics, Chatterton's intrusion into the Row­ ley world is still aimed, as were the earlier documents, at but­ tressing the authenticity of that world. "The Rolle" is complex in form and intention and will be made clearer by description. I shall divide it according to manifest and latent subject matter, though noting that the two are to be found both in Rowley's text and in Chatterton's notes and that the latent content is quite as consciously in­ tended as the manifest.

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Manifestly it is an account in the atomistic RowleyCamden historian's style of a medieval leprosarium whose gate and name only (St. Bartholomew's Hospital) remained in Chatterton's day. Of Rowley's text, a little over half is de­ voted to a perfunctory account of that institution. The se­ quence follows the physical layout, and there is considerable detail. It is almost impossible, nevertheless, to derive from the text and the eighteen drawings a clear visual idea of the priory. The often elaborate illustrations give details of sculptures, the main gate, the priory church, the windows, and the walls of the city. All of these drawings are of the sort Barrett would value for his history, but for clarity a map or plan of the priory complex would have been helpful. The latent (and clearly more important) content will be dealt with more thoroughly in my discussion in chapter three of Chatterton's idea of the history of English drama, for the listed contents of the priory's library and Chatterton's note 21 on medieval drama make probable the existence of the Row­ ley an plays. The notes also suggest that Chatterton owned copies of several of the plays listed by Rowley as part of the library; this would prepare Barrett and Catcott for plays Chatterton may have planned to write. There are also ele­ ments supporting Rowleyan works and an odd note on medieval theories of taste. However, the most puzzling latent element involves Rowley's listing of four books from the priory library that seem to deal with venereal disease. The four corresponding Chatterton notes have the general thrust of establishing that such disease was known in England long before the time of Columbus; the texture is gruesomely phys­ ical. Chatterton's intent is not clear. Barrett was, of course, a surgeon and there may be a good deal ofjoking involved. Yet the material also suggests a preoccupation with venereal dis­ ease at this time, though whether from anxiety, contraction, or adolescent curiosity it would be difficult to say. Note, however, that at the time of his death (about a year and nine months hence) Chatterton was apparently treating himself for such disease (see Works, II, 904). The most amusing facet of

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this subject in the "Rolle" is Chatterton's perhaps intention­ ally blundering interpretation of Chaucer's cook's culinary specialty ("blank-manger") as a sort of venereal mange: Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales writes, Botte great harme was yt as itte thoughte mee, That onne his Shinne a Mormaul had hee, And blacke Manger— Speghte in his Glossary expounds Mormall a Canker. [Two notes later:] The blacke Maingere (says Rowley) taketh offe the h[illegible] and the bodie is hylte [covered] wythe bouches [pocky ulcers or sores]: and sharpe Peynis. All these Cir­ cumstances and Descriptions candidly considered I shall not scruple to allow the Venereal Disease to have been known in England long before the time of Columbus, tho not by the same name. But the Conclusion of the fol­ lowing Couplet of Chaucer's would seem to mean some­ thing He gulpethe and he spekethe thro' his Nose As Hee were in the quacke or in the Pose Chatterton has interpreted the Miller's symptoms of drunk­ enness as the symptoms of secondary and perhaps tertiary syphilis. On balance, and allowing for a certain amount of playful­ ness in the piece, three main elements would seem to domi­ nate "The Rolle": first, Bristol antiquities for Barrett's use (manifest); second, medieval medical theory and practice, for Barrett and perhaps because of Chatterton's own interest (both manifest and latent); and third, medieval dramatic theory and practice, giving a context for the Rowleyan drama (latent). More than in any previous document, then, the im­ agining is not free fantasy; Barrett is being catered to, and plays are being supported and prepared for. The perfunctory organization of the piece shows that Chatterton was primarily seeking an excuse for the second and third elements men-

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tioned above, and many items in Rowley's text seem arbitrar­ ily introduced so that Chatterton may write notes irrelevant to the ostensible subject. An appropriate alternative title to "The Rolle of Seyncte Bartlemeweis Priorie" might well be "Games Chatterton Played." One comes away from what one can infer about motivation with an impression of great complexity just in terms of the number of gambits involved. One also comes away with a feeling of depression at the com­ ing to an end of the Rowley world as a game Chatterton could play for its own sake. The early success and ultimate failure of Chatterton's Walpole campaign and the recriminatory controversy that has continued into our century are an old story. Its most unbiased and thorough historian is Meyerstein (Life, pp. 253-284); in his account both principals come off as sympathetically as such contrary temperaments could have managed. I shall, then, concern myself here only with the strategies of the three lengthy Rowleyan documents involved. The first, "Rowley's Heraldic Account of Bristol Artists and Writers," was first printed entire in Works. It was apparently completed between December 1768 and February 1769, though parts may have been written as early as October-November 1768 (see Works, II, 939-940). It is the storehouse out of which the two docu­ ments actually sent to Walpole in late March 1769 were to a great extent drawn, so it suggests that the Walpole campaign was launched after considerable planning. The subject is a random list of Bristol artists and writers, and Chatterton gives their arms, chief works, dates of activ­ ity, and occasional anecdotes. Walpole's interest in early Eng­ lish fine arts clearly shapes the entries, but the tactic of insert­ ing poetry is also begun here. Five poems are inserted (by Abbot John, Canynge, and Rowley), though only one of these (John's "On Richard I") is eventually sent to Walpole. What Chatterton was clearly intending was that a wealth of material relevant to Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting in England would catch Walpole's immediate interest and that the poetry would recommend Chatterton as a source for ancient litera­ ture worthy of the Strawberry Hill imprint.

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Both documents actually sent to Walpole were written in late March 1769. The first, "The Ryse of Peyncteynge, yn Englande, wroten bie T. Rowleie, 1469 for Mastre Canynge," is sent as offering possible additions to a future edition of Anecdotes: correction of mistakes is humbly re­ quested. In general, "Ryse" offers to Anecdotes what "Discorse" and "Churches of Bristol" had offered to Barrett's his­ tory of Bristol: it purports to fill in the early gaps and extend the history of the subject into the more distant past. Walpole had been able to name no artists before the reign of King John. He had had to be imprecise about the beginnings of glass staining and wall painting, and in the first two chapters he had frequently returned to the idea that oil painting could have predated Van Eyck, even suggesting that Van Eyck might have learned the technique in England. All of this ex­ plains much in "Ryse" and also suggests that the rapidity and cordiality ofWalpole's reply was not simply courtesy, though it was that too. Chatterton had studied the tastes of this po­ tential patron to very good effect. The form of "Ryse" is that of an historical sketch rather rapidly breaking down into atomistic, roughly chronological detail—much like that in "Of the Auntiaunt Forme of Monies": the forms of both would seem to derive from the separate essay structures in Camden's Remains concerning Brit­ ain. Walpole's Anecdotes is indexed by reigns and that is how Chatterton generally dates his artists. The sketch begins in­ geniously with the Britons painting themselves, then goes with equal ingenuity to Hengist's introduction of heraldry. As Peter Heylyn's A Help to English History, one of Chatteron's major sources, is quite free in granting arms to the Saxon kings, Chatterton would appear to most people in his century to be on firm ground here. He informs Walpole of the arms of Hengist, Horsa, Cerdick, Cuthwar, Leof, Elawolf, Bristol, and y£lla. Walter Skeat noticed that the Anglo-Saxon words in these arms, thoughtfully glossed for Walpole, were all taken from the A entries in an Anglo-Saxon dictionary. From heraldry we move to Saxon wall painting and sculptures, glass stainers, and an embroiderer—these ranging from the

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eighth to the fifteenth centuries. Rowley concludes by prom­ ising more: "Of Carvellers and oder Peyncters I shall saie hereafterre Fyrst Englyschynge from the Latynne as to wytte: Peyncteynge improveth the Mynde and smootheth the rowghe Face of oure Spryghtes—" The account of AbbotJohne proved, as Chatterton clearly guessed, the most intriguing section in "Ryse" for Walpole. Johne Seconde Abbate of Seyncte Austyns Mynsterre was the fyrste Englyshe Paynctere yn Oyles: of hym have I sayde yn oder Places relateynge to his Poesies he dyd wryte a Boke of the Proportione of Ymageries: whereynne he saieth, the Saxonnes dydde throwe a mengleture [mixture] over theyre Coloures to chevie [preserve] them from the Weder. Nowe methynkethe steinede Glass mote nede no syke a casinge; butte Oile alleyne [only], botte albeytte ne Peyncteynge of the Saxonnes bee in Oyle, botte Water; or as whylome called Eae. Here Rowley ponders the same question that troubled Wal­ pole. In addition Chatterton sneaks into a footnoteJohn's fine poem "On Richard I." Chatterton's intent in all this also ap­ pears starkly in his first footnote. T. Rowleie was a Secular Priest of St. John's, in this City, his Merit as a Biographer, Historiographer is great, as a Poet still greater: some of his Pieces would do honor to Pope; and the Person under whose Patronage they may appear to the World, will lay the Englishman, the Antiquary, and the Poet, under an eternal Obligation— Two days later Walpole's exceedingly courteous and en­ thusiastic reply is written; it shows how effective Chatterton's strategy had been. Give me leave to ask you where Rowley's poems are to be found. I should not be sorry to print them, or at least a specimen of them, if they have never been printed.

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The Abbot John's verses, that you have given me, are wonderfull for their harmony and spirit, tho there are some words I do not understand, you do not point out exactly the time when he lived, which I wish to know, as I suppose it was long beforejohn ab Eyck's discovery of oil-painting. If so, it confirms what I had guessed, and have hinted in my Anecdotes, that oil-painting was known here much earlier than that Discovery or revival. Chatterton's excitement can be imagined. Two days later the second Walpole document, "Historie of Payncters yn Englande bie T. Rowley," is fired off, together with a letter. Chatterton later destroyed most of the letter's returned text, apparently because of its contents, which Walpole later sum­ marized thus: Chatterton. . . informed me that he was the son of a poor widow, who supported him with great difficulty; that he was clerk or apprentice to an attorney, but had a taste and turn for more elegant studies; and hinted a wish that I would assist him with my interest in emerging out of so dull a profession, by procuring him some place, in which he could pursue his natural bent (Works, II, 956). "Historie" is entirely atomistic, beginning thus: "Haveynge sayde yn oder Places of Payncteynge, and the ryse thereof eke of somme Peyncteres nowe bee ytte toe be sayde of oders wordie of Note." Rowley covers three painters (one anonymous) of the eighth and ninth centuries, then moves quickly to much detail and quoting of poets and historians from the eighth to the eleventh centuries. His rather transpar­ ent excuse is this: "Botte nowe wee bee upon Peyncteynge sommewhatte maie be saide of the Poemes of those daies whyche bee toe the Mynde, what Peyncteynge bee toe the Eyne:—the Coulours of the fyrste beynge mo: dureynge." Here follow three stanzas by Ecca and Elmar to be discussed in the last chapter. He returns perfunctorily to seven sculptors and painters of the sixth to fifteenth centuries. The strategic

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point of "Historie" is all too plainly apparent in the stanzas quoted and in Chatterton's own postscript: "John—was in­ ducted Abbot in the year 1186—and sat in the Deis 29 years—As you approve of the small Specimen of his Poetry I have sent you a larger, which tho' admirable, is still (in my opinion) inferior to Rowley whose Works when I have Lei­ sure I will fairly Copy and send you. ..." Here follows John's strange pastoral "Warre," which shall also be discussed in the last chapter. One strange entry and note show an even heavier-handed strategy: "Thomas a Baker from Corveynge Crosse Loafes, toke to corveyng of Ymageryes, whyche he did moest fetyvelie [handsomely], hee lyved ynne the Cittie of Bathe beeynge the fyrste yn Englande thatte used Hayre ynne the Bowe of the Fyddle beeynge beefore used wythe peetched Hempe or Flax." Chatterton's note to this is fulsome: "Noth­ ing is so much wanted as a History of the Antiquity of the Violin nor is any Antiquary more able to do it than Yourself, such a Piece would redound to the Honor of England as Row­ ley proves the use of the Bowe to bee knowne to the Saxons and even introduced by them—" The latent intentions in all of this are so patent as compared to "Ryse" that one does not wonder at Walpole's setting in­ quiries afoot, even without the revelations and appeal in Chatterton's covering letter. The whole transaction with Walpole leaves one with very mixed feelings. The one forlorn hope that might have changed literary history would have been a willingness on Walpole's part to publish the poetry on its eighteenth-century merits, though knowing that it was not authentic; but this is more than one could reasonably ask in the circumstances. His fatherly advice that Chatterton should stick to his profession, "that when he should have made a for­ tune, he might unbend himself with the studies consonant to his inclinations" (see Works, II, 770-771), was reasonable enough, and Chatterton seems to have begun by taking it seriously to heart. In his reply of 8 April he writes: "I am

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obliged to you, sir, for your advice, and will go a little be­ yond it, by destroying all my useless lumber of literature, and never using my pen again but in the law." However, just as the gamble is too much to reasonably ask of Walpole, so giv­ ing up poetry is too much to reasonably expect of Chatterton. The campaign and the relationship were doomed from the start. One also senses quite clearly in these documents that almost all spontaneity has left the documentary imagining of the Rowley world; we must nevertheless remember that some of the best Rowleyan poetry is to be written in the next two months. Chatterton's "Account of the Family of the De Berghams from the Norman Conquest to this Time" might be disqual­ ified as a Rowleyan document on two grounds: it bears di­ rectly on the Rowley world only because it includes the 1320 "Romaunte of the Cnyghte" (to be discussed in the next chapter as a planned foil to Rowley's poetry), and it uses the Rowleyan language in that poem only. For two major reasons I discuss "Account" here as the last of the Rowleyan docu­ ments. Chatterton here uses the methods by which he con­ structed the Rowley world, though for a new purpose, and "Account" does attempt to authenticate an imaginary past, though here it is the supposed past of his acquaintance and sometime patron Henry Burgum. A third reason may carry less weight: in impulse, in method, and in the strong under­ current of joking involved, "Account" carries us back to the first document, the "Extracts from Craishes Herauldry." Once again, toward the end of the Rowley year, Chatterton is manufacturing grand family connections, arms, and a distin­ guished history for a Bristol acquaintance. With it, then, the Rowley impulse seems to have come full circle. The format of this lengthy and elaborate genealogical and heraldic fantasy is calculated to convey, both visually and in its method, an overwhelming impression of authenticity. Every page is ruled into text, footnote, and marginalia sec­ tions thus:

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Chatterton's Art Marginalia on text: primarily abbreviated citation of authorities

Marginalia on footnotes: primarily abbreviated citation of authorities

Text: genealogy proper with supporting documents

Footnotes: heraldic bearings, transla­ tions of documents

All of this is imposingly transcribed in black and red inks. Even the occasionally undecipherable abbreviated citations of authorities convey the distinct impression of being the work of a genealogical and heraldic adept whose methods it would be absurd to question. Burgum eventually gave Chatterton two crowns for it (Works, II, 977); the imaginative elaborate­ ness of the hoax involved mental gymnastics upon which it would be difficult to put a fair price. Chatterton solved the basic problem, providing Burgum with noble ancestors, by manufacturing sixteen generations of De Berghams, all descended from the Norman Earl "Si­ mon de Seyncte Lyze alias Senliz." He fleshed out this genealogical skeleton with extended entries on other branches of the same noble root and trunk, with documents and funer­ ary inscriptions, with the "Romaunte" and its modernization the "Romance," with blazons for 203 individuals and families (the quarterings in single coats go as high as thirty-six), and with margins freighted with citations of historical, genealogi­ cal, and heraldic authorities and sources. The fictional De Bergham line takes up less than 15 percent of "Account." The major source is Arthur Collins's Baronettage of England: it is quoted and skimmed for 45 percent of the text (including eight of eleven documents and epitaphs quoted) for 13 percent

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of the footnotes, and for 35 percent of the marginal citations. The other major borrowing consists of Barrett's translations of all Latin documents and of an Oxford diploma in Latin and a memoire in French from Thomas Madox's Formulare Anglicanum. What seems as far as is presently known to have been original with Chatterton are the arrangement, perhaps the heraldry, and the skeleton of the De Bergham line. 16 The pervasive influence of Collins is characteristic of Chatterton. The Baronettage is a modest work when compared to such elaborate treatises as Collins's own Noble Families, just as Nathaniel Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary, the source of nearly two-thirds of the Rowley language, is modest compared to the grander scholarly dictionaries of the century. Chatterton may have sensed (and, if he did, quite rightly) that investigators would consider desk genealogies and dictionaries too obvious as possible sources for Rowley; modest sources helped to preserve Chatterton's methods and secrets. Yet what surely brought Collins to Chatterton's attention was the Molineux epitaph ("Account," 1. 376n), which is immediately followed in Collins by this paragraph: Sir Richard Molineux, Kt. who, 1 Henry IV, was found Cousin and next Heir of Thomas Chatterton of Ellall, viz. Son of William Molineux, Kt. Son of William, Son of Joan, Daughter of Alice, Sister ofLaderina, Mother to Alan, Father of Alan, Father of William, who was Father to (the aforesaid) Thomas Chatterton. 17 The impulse behind "Account" then is closely akin to that which constructed the Rowley world out of hints, scraps, and disconnected detail, though it is more playful than any docu­ ments of that world except the extracts from Craish. When we consider that "Account" was written just before Chatter­ ton wrote the last of the Rowley poems, that the contained "Romaunte" and its modernization begin to signal the aban­ donment of the Rowleyan search for the heroic, and that it was in effect made to measure for Burgum rather than being

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in anything but its joking an expressive structure, we can perhaps see "Account" as a part of the general calling to a halt of the entire Rowleyan enterprise and the turning to the new fields with which chapter four must deal. CHANGING FUNCTIONS OF A CHANGING IMAGINED WORLD It is relatively simple, without any analysis of Rowleyan doc­ uments, to reduce the Rowley world to a fairly clear scheme. PRINCIPALS

(1) Rowley, Canynge, their lives and relationship, their circle; (2) RedclifF Church, ancient RedclifF, Bristol; (3) The Rowleyan language. SUPPORTING CAST

(1) Central figures of Bristol history (e.g., Turgot, j4illa, Bawdin, the two Brightrics, St. Baldwin, St. Werburgh, Burton, Alfwold, Goddwyn, Harold); (2) Ancient Bristol walls, gates, streets, churches, bridges, and the castle; (3) Sources and models: Gibson and Camden, Pope, Shake­ speare, the Bible, Bailey's dictionary, Arthur Collins, Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden, Peter Heylyn 1 John Leland. EXTRAS

(1) Minor figures of Rowley's and earlier Bristol; (2) Lesser details of the imagined city, especially as documented in the drawings and nonliterary writings; (3) Turgot's sources; Rowley's minor sources; Chatterton's minor sources. What is omitted in such a scheme is, however, of the essence: the richness and insistence with which the Rowley world was imagined, and Chatterton's changing attitude toward it, and his changing use of it. The documents serve to complicate the picture and to scotch any notion that the world was a static imagination. The literary works now to be considered further complicate our picture of the total Rowley idea. We can at

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this point, however, say a good deal about the nature of the world and its changing function for Chatterton. In every document studied we have seen an almost obses­ sive pressure for authenticity, a pressure that called forth both large structural inventiveness, as in the use of the GibsonCamden model to perform a multitude of authenticating tasks, and quick-wittedness in getting out of small authentic­ ity scrapes such as the preliminary blunders that forced Chat­ terton to invent two Lamingtons, two Brightrics, and two St. Werburghs. We have seen that the principal authenticating impulse was density of invention—with language, with char­ acters, with the physical city. We have seen that in every case where it can be directly traced this density of imagining is catalyzed by scraps of the everyday world that Chatterton took as hinting at a past. The most concentrated instances of this in the documents just discussed are the Hardinge story, inspired by scattered lines in Leland's Itinerary, the fantasy of Bristol Castle, inspired by ruins seen and puzzling written de­ scriptions from the past, and the 1443 Redcliff envisioned in the third Rowley letter, catalyzed apparently by walks and explorations around Chatterton's neighborhood. This letter particularly, but also most of the other documents, demon­ strate that the idea grew from home outward: to put it quite physically, from Canynge's tomb in the great church across the way, to Redcliff, to Bristol, to the countryside around Bristol (as in "Hardinge"), and finally to the ancient England in which all of this is set. The importance of individuals and places diminishes as we move farther and father from St. Mary Redcliff. A further general characteristic of the world is that it clearly allows Chatterton a series of roles he enjoys playing. In Craish he has the learning and manuscripts to bestow nobil­ ity, arms, and history on his friends. In the documents from "Of the Auntiaunt Forme of Monies" through the third Row­ ley letter, he can wear his learning less lightly, can experience that more sober sense of mastery of his city's past that allows him to be a village Camden. In "The Rolle of Seyncte Bar-

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tlemeweis Priorie" he can, without losing the comfortable underpinning of historical mastery, play at being the skepti­ cal, speculative man of the world—a scholar who carries his learning lightly and who effortlessly tosses off solutions to such vexed questions as the rise of English drama and of Eng­ lish venereal disease. With Walpole and Burgum, finally, the world he has created allows him to study men on whom he has designs and to produce precisely the documents that will tickle their hobbyhorses. These changing roles also remind us that the Rowley world was never a static imagination. We have watched it compli­ cate in detail. We have seen the function of the world gradu­ ally change. It became less necessary as a total, self-consistent past once the Rowleyan literary works lost, as we shall see, their historic emphasis and turned to the development of character, plot, or argument. Consequently a world—at first play, then almost compulsive, disinterested invention, then a tool to be used—enters into very different sorts of relations with the literary works that emerge from it. At first, as in Craish, it authenticates these works with offhand allusions to their existence. As matters get more serious, the world pro­ vides a dense backgrounding for both content and the circum­ stances of composition of the literary works. In the last stage, especially with "Rolle," "Ryse," and "Historie," the Rowley world is providing forensic support for the authenticity of literary works Chatterton wishes to promote. At their best, the documents dramatize Rowley as a fifteenth-century Camden among inferior contemporary historians, just as, in the literary works, he appears as a fifteenth-century Alexan­ der Pope among shoddy contemporary prosodists and a fifteenth-century Shakespeare among inferior contemporary playwrights. This tracing of the world from play through obsessive play to exploitative means leaves unanswered the most difficult question of all: why did Chatterton imagine this world? If we take that world at its height—say around the time of "Dis-

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corse," then the citations early in this chapter of other authors who richly imagined the physical character and past of their native places can point the way toward an answer. Hardy, Joyce, and Faulkner did not feel Chatterton's need to insist on literal physical and historic authenticity (though there are traces of this in Joyce), but that might be a symptom of their more mature realization that the significance of countries of the mind does not lie in their exact correspondence to physical and historic fact, but rather in the poetic truths in which the author deals. For Chatterton this was not enough. Joyce gets at the essence of the impulse that guides all such endeavors when Stephen Dedalus sees himself as "a priest of the eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life." It is the anxiety or the in­ sistence of the artist that what he sees around and within, what he knows, on his pulses, what he experiences daily must mean grandly and eternally—this drives him to the creation of these Wessexes, Dublins, Mississippis, and Bristols. For the Rowley year the imagining of a concrete, significant past be­ hind the RedclifF and Bristol in which he daily lived satisfied this insistent appetite in Chatterton. I do not mean to suggest by this argument that Chatterton saw grand imagined past and drab eighteenth-century present as each other's enemies. It was precisely hints and clues in his present that catalyzed his imagining of the past. It was not escape that intoxicated him but rather the fact that a living present in which he vigorously struggled for an active and important place was given weight, depth, and dimension by imagining its past. RedclifF Church was grand and beautiful to him. It was the grander and the more beautiful for his im­ agining Canynge's plan, Rowley's design-gathering tour, the settling on the Durham design, the buying of the land, the hiring of the masons, the commissioning and performing of Ailla for the cornerstone ceremony, the commissioning and performing of "Parlyamente" at the dedication. We wish our acts and our surroundings to have a dimension and a solidity

Chatterton's Art

that can defeat apathy and oblivion. The Rowley world was Chatterton's imagination of such a solidity and of such di­ mension. A further answer in Chatterton's particular case must also be given. The core of the Rowley world is Rowley and his patron Canynge, and again and again we have seen and shall see Chatterton returning to the pattern of the gifted artist rec­ ognized, rewarded, and admired by the munificent, loving patron. The father Chatterton never had and the grand role for himself as Rowley are a special reason for imagining this world, helping to explain not only its richness but also Chat­ terton's insistence on its reality. Here the dream is opposed to his eighteenth-century present. If he can see himself as Row­ ley and if he can imagine Rowley's world so precisely as to force it into existence, then he can seem to have created the lost father in a perfect relationship. We shall see this concern developing in the Rowleyan heroic works and in later, postRowley an contexts.

Ill

The Rowleyan Works: Explorations in Heroic Modes, 1768-1769 Parts of the last chapter attempted to suggest the complex ways in which the Rowley world was, psychologically, a search for a beneficent father and for a role as gifted son. Ar­ tistically, this translates into a search, in the major Rowleyan works, for believable heroes and viable heroic modes. Throughout the Rowley year—summer 1768 through spring 1769—Chatterton explores mode after mode in an attempt to solve a circular problem: what sorts of men and actions are heroic and what forms and techniques can best bring out heroic character and act? Each work attempts diverse attacks on these problems, but the search itself has coherence: it takes simultaneously—sometimes within single works—two dis­ tinct directions. One sort of work deals with traditional heroes, the warriors, rulers, and saints that had dominated heroic literature and that, therefore, suggest their own tradi­ tional literary modes. Another sort explores the possibility of a new kind of hero, the merchant of wealth and character who uses his wealth as traditional heroes had used birth, prowess, or saintly vocation. No strong tradition was available to define this new hero. The rare bourgeois hero of the eighteenth-century novel had no such social role. Crusoe and Moll, for example, fight life alone, their drives for survival and identity lived out in hostile physical and social environ­ ments. Chatterton sought, in contrast, a hero who thrived almost effortlessly in the economic world and who could, therefore, devote his best energy and thought to taking over the beneficent functions of the traditional hero. The eight­ eenth-century works that come closest to what he seems to

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have had in mind are Pope's two moral essays on the use of riches and Humphry Clinker, whose Matt Bramble learns to graft the energy and enterprise of the middle class onto the traditions, charity, and taste of the gentry. Chatterton finds his traditional heroes and modes in literature and history, but his new hero, as all students of Chatterton know, arises from the magnificent tomb of William Canynge in Redcliff Church. Many of the works celebrate Canynge directly. Others, by presenting us with various roguish or mendacious antiheroes, satirize the improper use of riches, defining the new hero by showing us vividly what he is not; the best of these satirical works are attributed to the new hero Canynge. I shall follow the double thread of this search through the many works involved, sometimes grouping works out of strict chronological order so that the related artistic problems of the various modes will bring out more strongly the particu­ lar natures of works. NATIVE EPIC: "BRISTOWE TRAGEDIE" Some time after Chatterton wrote "Bristowe Tragedie," the first extant Rowley poem, he brought to two amateur Bristol antiquaries a copy into the text of which he had run rather ag­ gressive notes. He was essentially setting bait: he wanted Wil­ liam Barrett and George Catcott to ask for more of Rowley's work, and he wanted to be sure that they saw the importance of this piece. Since he was ostensibly praising Rowley rather than himself, he gives free reign to his pride in the poem and he tells us pretty clearly how he hopes we shall read it. Two parts of the final note give us the governing idea of the poem: "Thus heroically suffered this brave couragious Knyght, after enduring a long Imprisonment in the Castle . . . Loyalty to the Reigning Prince . . . had taken such Possession of the whole Man, that it push'd him beyond what may be strictly deem'd justifiable." The poem is, then, the climax of a tragic action of courageous suffering, the hero's flaw being obses­ sion with principle.

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Two other notes issue challenges to the still reigning heroic style of Pope's Homer. Of the homely opening stanza of "Bristowe Tragedie" Chatterton brags, "In my humble Opin­ ion the foregoing Verses are far more elegant and poetical than all the Parade of Aurora's whipping away the Night, un­ barring the Gates of the East &c &c." Ofthe procession to the block he writes, "I defy Homer, Virgil, or any of their Bardships to produce so great a Hero as Syr Chas. Bawdyn: as he's going to Execution." Both notes suggest a steady intent to create a native heroic mode. His model in style and narrative methods is Percy's Reliques and his critical support is the long seventeenth- and eighteenth-century search for a viable Eng­ lish epic. The notes, then, give us hints at his intent about governing idea and narrative and stylistic attack; the text sup­ ports these assertions. When Chatterton eventually acknowledged "Bristowe Tragedie" as his own, probably feeling that his developing skill had rendered this early poem unauthentic Rowley, he was laconic to the point of injustice to himself: "I found the argument and versified it," he told his mother. This is de­ monstrably inaccurate. What he could have found in the vari­ ous Bristol calendars was this skeletal "argument": that Ed­ ward IV came to Bristol in September 1461 or 1462, that John Bawdin (the name varies) and two accomplices were then either beheaded or hanged, then drawn and quartered, and that the heads were exposed, perhaps upon the castle gate at Exeter (see Works, II, 814). This much gave Chatterton only his conclusion—the execution and hints about the exhibition of the body. Even here the thrust of Chatterton's narrative is quite different; he keeps the imminent execution in the back­ ground from the second stanza on and foregrounds Bawdin, Edward, and William Canynge. Of these delineated charac­ ters only Edward and the names Bawdin and Canynge are in any sense among his givens; everything essential to the poem's impact has been invented. The background of the situation, the rights and wrongs in­ volved, is carefully excluded. Instead, the three men are jux-

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taposed in ways that bring out their characters by contrasts within similarities. Bawdin's steadfastness and bravery are thus more precisely defined, for Edward is obdurate (another sort of steadfastness) and Canynge is brave at great personal risk. Strangely enough, at certain points in the story both king and mayor are more sympathetic than the hero. Yet "Bristowe Tragedie" defines heroism as courageous suffering for principle. The poem is constructed as a series of events that bring Bawdin inexorably to his death and that, therefore, subject this steadfastness of principle and this bravery to in­ creasingly severe tests. The eight scenes of the action, num­ bered here for convenient reference, break into three groups. In the first (11. 1-100) Bawdin's death becomes inevitable: (1) it is pronounced by Edward, (2) announced to Bawdin, and (3) confirmed by Canynge's unsuccessful intercession. In the second stage (11. 101-260) Bawdin is tested privately as he (4) delivers to Canynge his credo and apologia and (5) comforts his distracted wife. In the concluding section (11. 261-392) the pageantry leading toward death takes over: (6) the procession is closely described, (7) Bawdin publicly confronts Edward, and (8) he mounts the scaffold, delivers his dying speech, and is beheaded, quartered, and his body exposed. If the poem succeeds, growing admiration for Bawdin should be strengthened by growing pity, and these responses will be colored by our responses to the rigid obduracy of Edward and the humane bravery of Canynge. The third of these scenes is not a test, but it is absolutely necessary to the proper direction of our response. It also in­ troduces Chatterton's new affluent hero quietly and effec­ tively upon Rowley's stage. The failure of Canynge's coura­ geous and eloquent plea eliminates early in the poem all possibility that Edward will relent. Thus our attention is ef­ fectively focused thereafter on Bawdin's behavior under vari­ ous pressures rather than on any possibility of reprieve. Our impression of the king's unmovable cruelty—strongly sug­ gested in his rather coarse appearance in the first scene, pro­ nouncing Bawdin's death over morning ale—is here strength-

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ened by Canynge's unsuccessful eloquence. Canynge at­ tempts to play upon moral qualities that the king is shown to lack—on pity, on mercy, and finally on a magnanimity that could respond sympathetically to "a brave and nobile mynde I Altho' ynne enemies." Edward's refusals grow in­ creasingly angry and vehement, and the necessary character points are made. We have seen two kinds of steadfastness in action. A hunger for revenge in Edward that cannot be touched by the strongest moral pleas as contrasted to the courage that allows Canynge to oppose Edward's manifest wishes. Suspense is rightly directed, and the king's steadfast­ ness based on will and secular power is presented so as to foil Bawdin's steadfastness based on principle. The problem for the poem is, however, that Canynge emerges in this scene and in the next as more sympathetic than Bawdin. That such a man should plead for Bawdin strengthens our good opinion of Bawdin, but also under­ mines any absolute admiration for him; Bawdin is too proudly and unthinkingly sure of his own moral rightness. Canynge's humane bravery is foiled by the self-righteous rigidity of Bawdin, which reaches its height in the fourth scene. Here Bawdin's lengthy speech, which must now give us our sense of the moral and spiritual resources that underlie his courage, presents his battle-tested philosophy of death and then a moral apologia. Part of the speech is endearing: "Nowe dethe as welcome to mee comes, I As e'er the moneth of Maie." However, the rest comes close to turning off not only sympathy but attention. If the scene had run from lines 101148, then continued from lines 177-212, it would have kept narrative pace and scenic proportion, and the soldierly brav­ ery would have worked for Bawdin. The seven quatrains from lines 149-176 spoil it. Bawdin here informs us that his father bore arms, that he taught Bawdin sound morality (bor­ rowed, as Meyerstein noted, Life, p. 212, from Pope's "Uni­ versal Prayer"), and that Bawdin never swerved from this path of rectitude. He calls on wife, king, and church to wit­ ness that he kept all the rules: he didn't commit adultery or

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treason, and he didn't eat meat during Lent or on Friday. This sort of rectitude is something less than stirring; it suggests a rigid pride in tedious scrupulosity. There is a distinct sag of attention and sympathy in this fourth scene. Bawdin's wife appears as the tension mounts: bells are toll­ ing, trumpets sounding, horses approaching. This would seem to be the severest test of all (cf. 11. 225-228), but Bawdin comforts her, leaves good advice for his sons, and comes close to faltering only when he thinks of her death: "Florence! shou'd dethe thee take—adieu! I Ye officers, leade onne." The interrupted sentence implies that he can trust his fortitude no longer; it takes "all his myghte" to leave Florence and march out with the officers. The rest of the poem is written in striking contrast to all that has gone before. Up until now we have had scenes of revelatory monologue or dialogue with an absolute minimum of sensuous detail or narrative support—a sort of black-andwhite moral close-up in which looming individuals are dimly seen and all is conveyed by voices. In the last three scenes— really one continuous action—we are thrown suddenly into the sunlit brilliance of Bristol's streets. This contrast of dim scenes dominated by voices with brilliantly colored pageantry is a sort of verbal cinematography. The three scenes begin and conclude with a combination of orderliness and sharp, sensuous detail. The bright procession is absolutely symmetrical: civic dignitaries, friars and min­ strels, archers, Bawdin, archers, friars and minstrels, civic dignitaries. The line of march is meticulously ordered. Chatterton takes the procession from the castle down Wine Street to the High Cross at the city center, then up Broad Street, through Frome Gate, and on to the scaffold. The disposition of Bawdin's body has a like order, visual intensity, and topo­ graphical precision. The head pole is placed on the High Cross; the quarters are exposed at the four points of the com­ pass at the city's boundaries: Kinwulph Hill, St. Paul's Gate, Castle Gate, and St. Augustine's Tower. All of this order gives a sense of the irresistible worldly power over which Bawdin's spirit nevertheless triumphs. Bawdin is the individ-

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ual alone, carried inexorably to his death. As mortal he is pas­ sive and must suffer, but in the fourth scene he had said, "Hee can ne harm my mynde." Even while the order makes him victim, it highlights speeches and acts that can only be those of a free mind. At the beginning of the procession he mounts the sled "Wythe lookes fulle brave and swete." In its midst he is drawn on "Bolde as a lyon." At the High Cross he speaks confidently and simply to his God. His bold face-to-face de­ nunciation of the king forces Edward to admit, "Hee's greater thanne a kynge!" He mounts the scaffold as though it were a triumphal, chariot. He boldly reproaches and appeals to the people of Bristol, beseeches God to take his parting soul, Thenne, kneelynge downe, hee Iayd hys hedde Most seemlie onne the blocke; Whyche fromme hys bodie fayre at once The able heddes-manne stroke. It is hard to imagine how all of this could have been better done. We can only grant Chatterton his right, at this point, to "defy Homer, Virgil, or any of their Bardships." What comes completely alive in these last three scenes, strengthening the impact of the tragic narrative, is the intensity with which Chatterton imagined the medieval fabric and life of his native city, a past that was for Chatterton a grand poem in itself. A few minor points ought to be touched on. The first and last stanzas are effective transitional and framing devices, defining our attitudes toward both Bawdin and Edward. They start us in the everyday world of crowing cocks and waking villagers and return us finally to the same world, one in which people call upon God to save the king. These stanzas also serve in the absence of a judging narrator. In the first, Edward's morning is not that of other folk—the ruddy light eclipses the gray predawn, and he hears not Chanticleer but "the raven's crokynge throte." Also, the voice in the last stanza asks God to grant Edward eternal life with Bawdin: for the king salvation is clearly in doubt. The medium, effective enough in fulfilling its immediate

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purpose, did not please Chatterton for long. It is a first stage only in building the poetic language of his imagined past. It is at this point skillful imitation of the traditional ballad. The formulaic epithets, apostrophes, recurring phrases, antiqued spelling, self-conscious terseness, and archaisms are the stock in trade of the poets of the medieval revival. Chatterton is be­ ginning to work toward a Rowleyan heroic mode, and his first attempt follows paths mostly blazed by Bishop Percy. We shall hear him gradually finding his own voice. Yet what do emerge as remarkable in this first Rowley poem are the economy of plot and scene, the skillful contrasts of character, the powerful symbolic pageantry, and the fine "cinemato­ graphic" contrasts. FOUR EXPERIMENTAL EPIC FRAGMENTS Chatterton's next four attempts at epic are fragments—all, in one way or another, ambitious failures. They are, however, instructive failures, both for Chatterton and for the student of his developing art. We have enough of each to fairly confi­ dently reconstruct the larger underlying artistic intentions. We can also see why Chatterton abandoned each idea, some­ what further along in each case—at line 32 of "Ynn auntient Dayes," after one "cento" (108 lines) of "The Tournament" (also called "The Unknown Knyght"), at line 564 of "Battle of Hastynges I," and at line 720 of "Battle of Hastings II." All four were apparently written very shortly after the achieved, completed "native" epic "Bristowe Tragedie." First of all, the four fragments suggest that the notes to that piece, with their earned challenges to "Homer, Virgil, or any of their Bardships," were as defensive as they were defiant. All four fragments are moving away from Percyan epic to­ ward something less popular, less native, something closer either to English literary epic in the line of Spenser or to the older classical tradition known to Chatterton in the transla­ tions of Pope and Dryden. Subjects remain native, even Bristolian. Yet having achieved substantially in the ballad mode

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and having begun to realize the possibilities of a developing Rowleyan language, Chatterton, in these fragments, begins to challenge "their Bardships," not in the intentionally "prim­ itive" Percyan mode but on the grander field of traditional Western epic. Even in prosody he moves, except in "The Tournament," to a pentameter line, though regularly prefer­ ring stanzaic patterns (Spenser clearly influenced him here) to Pope's and Dryden's more "modern" heroic couplets. Why should "Ynn auntient Dayes," probably written im­ mediately after "Bristowe Tragedie" and, in imagery and in­ forming idea, a considerable advance over that poem, peter out after thirty-two lines? The style is vigorous, sensuous, fully rendered, and strongly ordered. It has stylistic afFmities with the vivid conclusion of "Bristowe Tragedie," though the ballad stanza is dropped in favor of full decasyllabic quat­ rains alternately rhymed a b ab and a abb. It seems probable, in fact, that except for the last eight lines, in which the poem breaks d o w n i n m o r e w a y s t h a n o n e , a n eight-linea b a b c c d d stanza is intended and that Chatterton is therefore moving closer to the standard ten-line stanza Rowley will come to prefer. The subject was apparently to have been double, the life of St. Werburgh and the origin of St. Mary Redcliff Church. A title later added both acknowledges Chatterton's authorship and suggests a subject that does not appear in the extant frag­ ment: "In Imitation of Our Old Poets. On Oure Ladyes Chirch." Chatterton has invented, in fact, a male St. Werburgh. We learn from later works that this St. Werburgh converted the Saxons of the Bristol area, moved his converts from downriver to the sites of RedclifF and Bristol (thus founding the city), and that in 644 his grateful converts dedi­ cated a church to Our Lady and St. Werburgh beside the later site of RedclifFChurch—the first church, therefore, in Bristol. Hence Chatterton's odd title to a fragment that mentions no church. He clearly planned a rather leisurely narrative of his imagi-

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nary Werburgh's life—his secular affluence and position, his renunciation of these to turn missionary, his miraculous deeds and missionary successes, all leading to the building of the church. Chatterton writes elsewhere of four churches on the site before Canynge builds the final Redcliff Church (see Works, II, 868). Thus, we cannot be sure whether this poem was to stop with St. Werburgh and the first church, or per­ haps to devote a canto to him and to each subsequent builder. All are dealt with in later works. If this poem was to have given the whole history at the pace of these opening stanzas it would have been very long. Still, once either such plans was conceived, why should Chatterton abandon a poem whose rich imagery goes beyond anything heretofore achieved (cf. 11. 1-4, 9-12, 17-20)? The Rowleyan word proportion is still very low, the style modern. As his proficiency with the invented language grew, he decided to acknowledge "Bristowe Tragedie," this poem, and "Battle of Hastynges I," but he could certainly have re­ cast thirty-two lines in thicker Rowleyan language. Some­ thing clearly flagged here much sooner than with the two equally ambitious Hastings fragments. In the last eight lines the ab a b a abb pattern breaks down and iterations begin to fill up the decasyllables. It seems likely that learning that St. Werburgh (after whom an actual Bristol church was named) was a woman put a halt to the project, though he later discovered the way to get around that difficulty outlined, in our last chapter, in the dis­ cussion of Brightric. At any rate, neither subject—saint or church—is aban­ doned. His male St. Werburgh appears importantly in later works, though never again with such wealth of detail; and the history of Redcliff Church becomes one of the central Rowleyan subjects. The artistic interest of this fragment lies in the ambitious shaping idea and in the richness of the texture. The treatment of the saint's early affluence—the location of his estate, his castle, his plantings, his retinue, his hunting ani­ mals and birds—show, like the conclusion of "Bristowe

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Tragedie," an intensely sensuous and orderly imagining of the physical texture of the past. What went wrong with "One Cento of an ancient Poem called the Unknown Knyght or the Tournament"1 is more apparent. The action allows Chatterton to develop further his interest in ordered medieval texture (here the heraldic trap­ pings and the pageantry of tourneying) and to experiment rather boldly with prosody, but he attempted a structural principle that eventually raised impossible problems. The opening stanza recalls his pride in the homely opening of "Bristowe Tragedie" and the tourneying has, again, affinities with the rich concluding pageantry of that poem. It is the structure that goes bad: there is absolutely no suspense. As we move from combat to combat we seem to be watching a kind of body billiards, and this effect is reinforced by combatants presented almost completely in terms of physical prowess and mindless competitive fury. There is no sense of character. Furious, doughty A fells ditto B and C and retires for later feats; furious, doughty D fells ditto E and draws with ditto F. End of first hour, first "cento," and fragment. "The Tour­ nament: An Interlude," written the next spring, suggests the structure planned and has a more elaborate but analogous in­ troductory section. However, this would not have saved the early "Tournament." The poem has been much praised by Watts Dunton, George Saintsbury, and Meyerstein (see Works, II, 820-821) as an influential experiment in prosodic substitution. Ofits 108 lines, half are in four-beat equivalent verse and eight are of uncertain rhythm. I believe that Chatterton's originality here has been exaggerated and his intent misunderstood. Whenever he uses anapestic substitution and awkward or uncertain rhythms he is suggesting either pre-Rowley prosodic crudity or the prosodic in­ feriority of Rowley's contemporaries. It should be remembered that in 1768 Chaucer was still generally thought to be metri­ cally irregular and crude. The poems that have these ir­ regularities are never assigned to Rowley, and they are fre-

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quently dated long before him. Of "The Unknown Knyght," for example, the subtitle states "The Author Unknown." "The Romaunte of the Cynghte" also uses prosodic substitu­ tion and metrical uncertainly; it is dated 1320 (over a century before Rowley) and attributed to SirJohn de Bergham. Two metrically puerile poems—"A Chronycalle of Brystowe wrote bie Rauf Cheddar, Chapmanne, 1356" and "John Ladgates Answer" to Rowley—perform the same functions. Chatterton's point is that Rowley did for medieval English prosody what the Waller-Denham-Dryden-Pope correctness had done for post-Renaissance prosody. Rowley is as much of the school of Pope as of the school of Chaucer and Spenser. Anapestic substitution had, for certain eighteenth-century theorists and, later for Coleridge, a primitive patina. All must have known it intimately in a form in which we all still know it, in nursery rhymes, which perhaps give us a sense of its getting at older and truer feelings. Since Chatterton never be­ stows this patina on Rowley but only on those clearly in­ tended to be his prosodic predecessors or contemporary in­ feriors, it seems that Chatterton had an influence, through Coleridge, on romantic prosody and consequent critical theory quite the reverse of his intent. This is not to denigrate at all the interest of these imaginary projections of a preRowleyan irregularity and uncertainty, which underline once more the elaborateness of Chatterton's attempt to construct a coherent literary past. The central problem in Chatterton's two epics on Hastings is the same problem that brought "The Unknown Knyght" to a halt: ways of overcoming the man-as-thing effect must be found without denying the physical combat essential to the subject. Gross physical effects do not spoil the heroic impact if the hero suffers them, as in "Bristowe Tragedie"; in such cases they arouse our pity. Nor do they spoil it if the victims of a hero's violence are presented as fully deserving it. Further answers can lie in showing physical heroism against great odds (also Bawdin) or in making us think with the hero and

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find his thoughts admirable, courageous, magnanimous. When the winner of a brutal boxing match embraces the loser, we insist on taking it as generous comradeship, a rec­ ognition of community in hardship and endurance. Thus, such a gesture raises the winner's moral stature in our eyes and diminishes the impact of the brutality. Tragic heroes suf­ fer; we pity their sufferings, admire their courage, and fear for ourselves. Humanity in adversity, not prowess, is central. For those nontragic heroes whose actions are of necessity physical and aggressive, it is crucial that we see them as strong and human; otherwise laughter or revulsion will dominate our response.2 Hastings was both a natural and an extremely difficult epic subject. Though the battle shaped a nation's history, no large body of myth or even of historic fact had accrued. What little Chatterton might have learned from the historians he chose to ignore until "Battle of Hastings II." His givens in "Battle of Hastynges I" are three: Harold and a random list of Saxon names apparently drawn from indexes or from Camden's brief essay "The Names of the English-Saxons";3 William and a list of equally characterless Norman names derived from Fuller's Hastings lists (see Works, II, 824-825); and the narrative style of the battle scenes in Pope's Iliad. Something had to be done if the poem were not to be dominated by vari­ ations on this sort of thing: "With his Tylt Launce he strook with thilk a myghte, I The Normans Bowels steemde upon the Feeld—". That Chatterton was aware of the tedious butchery is clearly indicated by the opening stanzas of "Battle of Hastynges I" and by the many devices and techniques used to counter the problem. The first twenty lines are very defen­ sive: they warn the reader that manly grief rather than un­ manly aversion must be his response to the carnage. In Row­ ley's prose account of the poem he calls it "Bloudie Battle of Hastynges"—another admission of the problem. Chatterton unfortunately settled on a faulty principle to insure the proper response. We are to see Hastings from the point of view of the

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heroic English; the Normans are to be, with a few exceptions, treacherous, cowardly, or incompetent. One can immediately see that this principle would have given rise to serious im­ probabilities by the end of the poem, and it raises artistic difficulties from the start. A secondary device is the attempt to give internal pattern­ ing to the slaughter by organizing the action, as in Iliad battle scenes, around the exploits of a few heroes. The patterning is best seen by giving a quick summary of the seven sections ot the poem: (1) introductory apologia (11. 1-30); (2) prelude to battle, with contrasting harangues by Harold and William (11. 31-50); (3) first phase, battle at distance, emphasizing Harold and William (11. 51-120); (4) second phase, close combat, cen­ tering around Welsh-Saxon cooperation between ap Jevah and Egelred (11. 121-210); (5) exploits of Harold and his earls (11. 211-300); (6) exploits of Herewald (11. 301-410); (7) further Welsh-Saxon cooperation by three Saxon earls and two Welsh warriors (11. 411-564). Here, where Chatterton adandoned the poem, though the issue is still in doubt, the Saxons have a clear advantage. Within these major sections various internal organizing de­ vices are used. In the third section William's incompetence is suggested in a near-comic contrast to Harold's prowess. Harold's spear is deadly; his asenglave stops Norman arrows in midflight. William, on the other hand, kills one horse and wounds another in the knee, after which he must duck to avoid the spear of the falling rider. The effectiveness of Norman bows in fighting "aloof at distaunce" is acknowledged, but the prowess of their leader is something short of awesome. This lowers in turn the impressiveness of Saxon heroism. Section five, Harold and his earls, introduces another or­ ganizing principle: not only is each Saxon deed the conse­ quence of a previous Norman deed—usually an instance of cowardice, impertinence, or treachery—but the total move­ ment through the Saxon group is circular. The sixth section, on Herewald, begins with his birth near Stonehenge and di­ gresses there to put Hastings into a long context of British

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sacrifice, Roman-British battles, and early Saxon treachery against the Britons—probably intended to be compared to the Welsh-Saxon cooperation in sections four and seven. This is the only section to be carried over, much reworked, into "Battle of Hastings II." The final section combines the Welsh-Saxon cooperation of four with the circular movement of five. Interweaving reappearances of characters are on the increase throughout the poem, and brief attempts are made from time to time to individualize characters by giving them a past of some sort. In the texture of Pope's Iliad the combat scenes are only one recurring subject in the complex human and divine mosaic of the poem. Too few of Chatterton's attempts at this sort of variety are worked solidly into the narrative and thematic tex­ ture of the poem. Perhaps the most successful are the frequent intrusions from the point of view of the narrator, the monk Turgot, an eyewitness to the battle (1. 22), whose Saxon poem Rowley is here translating (see Works, II, 826-827). Turgot is given to angry outbursts at the treachery or effemi­ nacy of the Normans, though he occasionally treats them with pity or magnanimity. Early in the poem he invoked a fellow Durham monk, a skillful painter, much as Fielding and Sterne invoke Hogarth at moments when language seems in­ adequate. Turgot has a curious store of Welsh folklore, which he introduces rather arbitrarily, but which probably relates to the Welsh-Saxon theme and to his devoting his lengthiest de­ scription (11. 47-96) to the terrific Welsh hero ap Tewdore. Turgot's point of view gives some unity and occasional textural variety. The other major digressions are the similes—lengthy or brief—that break into the poem when Chatterton wants em­ phasis or variety. Except for those involving Welsh folklore, they are drawn from Ossianic and Homeric nature—storms, floods and rushing waters, falling oaks and rocks, bulls and wolves—though here again the model is probably Pope's Iliad. A curious feature of the longer epic similes is that over half of them can be read as undercutting, sometimes almost

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comically, the heroic deeds they are supposed to heighten. It seems possible that here, as in the sorry results of William's bowmanship, Chatterton is finding it hard to resist teasing his lofty subject and the epic manner. 4 Although all of these solutions fail to solve the problem of gory tedium, the narrative is markedly more complex and skillful in the final sections. Still, I doubt that any reader regrets Chatterton's calling a halt at line 564. This action and these warriors do not make the heroic mark, and the attempts to relieve the tedium and add variety are seldom directly ad­ dressed to this central difficulty. Following neoclassic epic rules—the great national event, the epic similes, the ha­ rangues, the national theme or moral, the digressions, the in­ vocations and apostrophes—has produced something closer to bathos than to epic sublimity. This raises a question: why try it all again in "Battle of Hastings II"? Chatterton had good reasons. First, his skill with his medium has steadily increased. In "Battle of Hastynges I" he has tripled the Rowleyan word proportion since "Bristowe Tragedie," and he has found the Rowleyan lan­ guage for the loftier style. He has only to tighten the rhyme schemeo f his ten-line pentameter stanza froma b a b c d c d e e to ababbcbcdd and add the alexandrine foot to reach the Rowleyan stanza in which he ultimately will do his best ex­ tended heroic writing (see Works, II, 825-826). Furthermore, this stanza becomes markedly more flexible in the course of "Battle of Hastynges I." In the early sections, he rather stiffly gives each event or topic a half stanza, a stanza, or two stan­ zas, but in the last 150 lines we find more and more frequently what might be called stanza enjambment. Subjects flow over into the beginnings of new stanzas and are started at points other than the first or fifth lines. The mechanical effect of se­ quential slaughter is thus less frequently reinforced by stanzaic rigidity. The medium then—both the language Chatterton was inventing and his prosody—is becoming increasingly flexible and versatile. Chatterton attempted Hastings again because "Battle of Hastynges I" distinctly improves as it goes

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along. I believe, in short, that Chatterton dropped "Battle of Hastynges I" not out of a sense of failure, but because he was beginning to see his way clear to an effectively heroic and more Rowleyan "Battle of Hastings II." The best that has been said for the second version is that it is a considerable improvement over the weak first version and that passages of poetic and prosodic excellence can be cited to match much that is limp or bombastic. The structure has never been discussed, perhaps because one's first impression in skimming both versions is that Chatterton dealt with Hast­ ings by reeling off gory ten-liners and wild digressions until he tired. Given, however, a sympathetic and attentive read­ ing, "Battle of Hastings II" not only surpasses the earlier attempt—avoiding the major pitfalls there encountered and building from the lessons there learned—but even approaches a formal synthesis of subject, manner, and technique that can evoke an epic response. There is a risk in discussing the form and intended effect of an uncompleted poem. Yet we know how Hastings, as Chatterton knew it from the histories, must end—with the strate­ gic Norman retreat, the triumphant English pursuit, the dis­ astrous Norman counterattack on the now scattered English, the heroic shieldwall on the hill, the death of Harold, and the consequent final defeat.5 Ifwe extrapolate from the clear form of the completed 720 lines toward that conclusion, we can make reasonable guesses at the intended whole. The idea that organizes and determines the plot is that the rashness in Eng­ lish bravery and the policy and strategy in Norman decorum shall together lead to English defeat. Moreover, the defeat of this rash bravery—exemplified in the poem by Harold and the other heroes, but most repeatedly and particularly by the Bristolian leader Alfwold—is calculated, with considerable probability of success, to arouse in the reader the tragic-heroic emotions of admiration and pity for fallen English greatness. Though longer than the first Hastings attempt, there are only five major stages in the action: (1) the complex pre-

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liminaries to battle (11. 1-219); (2) the exploits of the leaders of the Kentish and Bristolian van, especially of Alfwold (11. 220-380); (3) the selfless heroism of Adhelm, leader of the English rear (11. 381-520); (4) a tonally somber digression on Stonehenge, native place ofHerewarde, leader of the flanks (11. 521-560); (5) a movement, after three hours fighting, to close combat, resulting in a threat to Harold and a successful counterassault by Alfwold (11. 561-720). It may be objected that narration organized on the successive feats of leaders of the English as Chatterton imagines them marshaled into van, rear, and flanks is artificially spatial if the feeling and move­ ment of a complex battle is being sought. It is true that the fragment as a whole falls short of the feeling of total martial activity that we get in the excellent narrative of preliminaries. Chatterton, however, had little enough history and few enough established characters to work with (see Works, II, 823-825). He has organized the action chronologically— preliminaries (first section), distant combat with arrows and spears (second through fourth sections), hand-to-hand com­ bat with swords (last section)—and, within that, by the deeds of the imagined leaders of the van, rear, and flanks. Pope's battle scenes again suggest the individual champion arrange­ ment, but Chatterton still lacks the rich body of myth that adds variety and dimension to the battle scenes Pope inherited from Homer. Considering his materials, Chatterton did well, and the larger problem was perhaps insoluble for Hastings. We know, at any rate, that he first dropped the poem at line 520, that under heavy pressure from William Barrett he pro­ duced the final two hundred lines (the last two sections) "some time after," and that he did no more. That what he did accomplish was substantial Can be seen by his almost completely bypassing the clockwork butchery that, despite all contrivances, broke the back of "Battle of Hastynges I." In "Battle of Hastings II" the major characters are strengthened and deepened, forcing us to think of them as individuals. For William, Harold, and Harold's brothers Leofwin and Girth, Chatterton expanded on hints afforded by history (see Works, II, 823-825). Adhelm gains stature by his

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connections with Durham and by his steadfast turning from a peerless wife to do battle for his country. Herewarde's associ­ ation with Stonehenge is tonally connected, by an epic simile, to the slaughter he makes. Alfwold, the hero of the poem as far as it goes, is almost pure warrior, but in such an imposing, fearless way that he can be taken to embody the English flaw of rash bravery: his death will humanize him. The deeds of these heroes cannot be permanently lifted above the physical; the gore, the gushing entrails, the split heads and spattered brains are as insistently here as they are in Pope's battle scenes. However, Chatterton has learned from Pope and Homer to lessen the effect by surrounding circum­ stance, digression, and elevating epic simile. In "Battle of Hastings II" physical combat takes up only a third of the total poem, it is usually seen from a less physical angle, and it is broken up into three stretches among which lengthy contrast­ ing, unwarlike stretches intervene. All of these contrivances do as much to underplay the gore as could well be managed in a battle epic. The mechanical slaughter effect has almost com­ pletely disappeared with the concentration on the deeds of in­ dividual leaders. Most important of all, the decision to paint impartially the moral strengths and weaknesses of both sides frees Chatterton from melodrama. This crucial decision for impartiality is explicitly announced and immediately put into play in the first ten lines of the poem: Oh Truth! immortal daughter of the skies, Too lyttle known to wryters of these daies, Teach me, fayre Saincte! thy passynge worthe to pryze, To blame a friend and give a foeman prayse. The fickle irioone, bedeckt wythe sylver rays, Leadynge a traine of starres of feeble lyghte, With look adigne3 the worlde belowe surveies, The world, that wotted not it could be nyghte; Wythe armour dyd, b with human gore ydeyd,c She sees Kynge Harolde stande, fayre Englands curse and Pryde. "noble

bdight

cdyed

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The fickle (neutral) moon's dispassionate observation of Harold, whose blood-stained armor suggests guilt already in­ curred, early demonstrates that though Rowley's original au­ thor is still the Saxon monk Turgot, impartiality will allow good and evil to emerge as Truth teaches. The next 210 lines, the elaborate preliminaries, embody Chatterton's decision to make full use of the history he had ignored in "Battle of Hastynges I." Stow's Annales of England and probably Camden's Britannia are the sources for the Eng­ lish drunkenness on the eve of Harold's birthday, the Nor­ man prayers, the scouts and their reception in the Norman camp, the argument between Harold and Girth, the English and Norman marshaling, the emissary monk and his options, Harold's contemptuous reply, the English standard, the tight array of the English, the use of Roland's song, and the con­ trast between Norman arrows and English spears. However, Chatterton freely reworks his sources (see Works, II, 823824). He makes Harold into something of a desk general who delegates the more dangerous tasks to others and does not even marshal and harangue his own army. The Saxon mar­ shaling is given in more specific detail than in any possible source, and Chatterton clearly intends from the start to make the structural use of it that has been sketched out. The Kentish-Bristolian van is Chatterton's invention, and Bristol Alfwold's central role is clearly planned from the start. The total effect of this lengthy, "historical" opening section is to give the poem verisimilitude and a somber portentousness. Harold's men have riotously celebrated his birthday and are dead drunk the night before the battle, while the Nor­ mans, soberly watchful, pray the night out. In the scouting episode the Saxons are rash and brutal, the Normans and Wil­ liam grave and magnanimous. Leofwin's furious reproach to the drunken Saxons, their confused awakening and arming, and their downcast shame are all brilliantly evoked. Leofwin is brisk and decisive in marshaling them and they regain or­ der, purpose, and heroic stature as they stand linked for his succinct harangue. The quarrel between Girth and Harold

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brings out the rashness in each, juxtaposing it with William's orderly marshaling of his troops and his rational parleying in­ structions, and juxtaposing that, in turn, with Harold's admi­ rable but impetuous response. The section concludes with a rich description of Harold's standard (whose motto—"He conquers or he dies"— embodies the English flaw and foreshadows their fate) and with his order for the English advance. An epic simile effec­ tively compares the ominous sight of the advance to the surg­ ing of the ground in an earthquake. The section that opened with the moon's impartial observation of Harold's strength and weakness concludes with the awed sun, pausing in its rise at the sight of the moving troops and hiding its light. In every way this first section tells us that a dignified and portentous epic is under way. The remainder of the fragment does not, unfortunately, maintain this standard. The old problem of butchery reap­ pears in the first stanza of the second selection, when Harold throws the first spear of the battle. Nevertheless in the 160 lines of battle in this section, only half of the stanzas center on descriptions of death, and these are toned down frequently either by highly metaphorical treatment or by summarizing. In fact, "Battle of Hastings II" epic similes are most fre­ quently used for a metaphorical summary of slaughter. They are highly visual but not bloody, and they are much more frequently and effectively used than in the first version. Per­ haps the most effective passage in the second section is the ex­ panded comparison of Norman arrows to Saxon spears. The subject got only four lines in the first version, but here, where it is to be the rule through line 560, it gets nearly four stanzas. In these lines the new effectiveness of epic simile and the metaphoric handling of death is rapidly felt. Section two rather quickly moves from Harold and a now effective William to Alfwold, who dominates the section. In prowess and stature he replaces Mervyn ap Tewdore of the first version, just as Bristolian might and Bristol allusions re­ place the Welsh motif.6 It is to him that we are indebted for

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the first sustained butchery in this version: in forty lines a breast is pierced followed by a tide of blood, a smoking brain is shaken out of a cloven skull, heart's blood spills from a back, and blood and soul rush from a pierced throat. This first series of Alfwold's exploits ends with what may be a porten­ tous line for the total poem planned: "The Brystowe menne styll ragd, for Alfwold was not dead." The relief brought by the third section is perhaps too abrupt as we shift suddenly from Alfwold's carnage to Adhelm's father, Adhelm's piety, and sixty lines on the majesty and beauty of the wife he left. Both Adhelm's loyalty to St. Cuthbert and the allusions used to heighten Kenewalchae's beauty curiously and for the most part effectively mingle the early painted "Brutons," English landscape and geography, classical allusion, and especially the histories of Dearmach, Iona, Lindisfarne, and Durham monasteries—all of this, I take it, a part of Turgot's point of view as learned historian of Britain and as monk of Durham (see Works, II, 859-860). Both the Bristol interest and the Durham allusions make clear that Turgot is to make his presence felt not as the angry denouncer of Norman treachery but as the impartial, learned monk who nevertheless has particular loyalties to places dear to him. At the end of this third section (1. 520) Chatterton called his first halt in "Battle of Hastings II." The difference in texture and organization between the two ver­ sions may be judged by the fact that in just forty-four more lines of the first version he had moved through seven distinct stages of the action. This difference is further indication that "Battle of Hastings II" is much more a poem of texture and tonality, much less a poem of frantic action. The problems now facing Chatterton are two: much more slaughter will be required to get us to Harold's death, and this will require further ingenuity to tone it down and keep it heroic. Nothing more was written until "some time after, in consequence of Mr. Barrett's repeated sollicitations for the conclusion." The last two hundred lines are not, of course, a conclusion. They carry out the original plan suggested by the

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marshaling of the army, since they deal with Herewarde, leader of the flanks, and then return to the van and Alfwold. However, this organizing device is certainly played out by line 720, where Chatterton stops the poem for good. There is, however, no letup in his development of his medium. Rowleyan word proportion jumps by a third again, and the gore is almost completely subordinated in these last two sections to loftier subjects and a loftier language. What Chatterton does here is interesting in itself and is closely related to the total concept of the poem as I have hypothesized it. These last two-hundred lines begin with another abrupt transition from slaughter. The lengthy description of Stonehenge drawn from the first version is here reworked so as to shift the interest from history to ominous tonal effects. In the first version Stonehenge was traced from its supposed Druid origins through its function as a place of British celebration, to its serving as the site for Hengist's massacre. In this version the twenty lines of "historic" material are cut to ten, and six­ teen lines of moody topographical poetry are added.7 The first stanza conveys the feeling of this new material and an­ ticipates rather closely the catalytic landscape of Chatterton's best-known poem, "An Excelente Balade of Charitie." Where fruytless heathes and meadows cladde in greie, Save where dernea hawthornes reare theyr humble heade, The hungrie traveller upon his waie Sees a huge desarte alle arounde hym spredde, The distaunte citie scantlie to be spedde,b The curlynge force of smoke he sees in vayne, Tis too far distaunte, and hys onlie bedde Iwimpled in hys cloke ys on the playne, Whylste rattlynge thonder forrey0 oer his hedde, And raines come down to wette hys harde uncouthlie" bedde The tone is sustained throughout the short section, and the curiously effective epic simile dealing with Herewarde's a Solitary

b attained,

or spied

c forays

d harsh

Chatterton's Art

ί02

slaughter somehow manages both to elevate the slaughter to heroism and to make it a force of the brooding nature evoked in the description of Salisbury Plain, whence Herewarde came. Soe when derne Autumne wyth hys sallowe hande Tares the green mantle from the Iymed a trees, The leaves besprenged b on the yellow strande Flie in whole armies from the blataunte 0 breeze; Alle the whole fielde a carnage-howse he sees, And sowles unknelled hover'd oer the bloude; From place to place on either hand he slees d And sweepes alle neere hym Iyke a bronded 6 floude; Dethe honge upon his arme; he sleed so maynt, f 'Tis paste the pointeF of a man to paynte. The question is whether this whole section, separately power­ ful, contributes in some way to the total poem. For me it links the tragic action to the long history of slaughter traditionally connected with Stonehenge, thus putting Hastings in grim historical perspective; it links it also, through Herewarde, to nature's cycle of growth, flowering, fading, and death. The simile does, at any rate, solve the slaughter problem for this section, and it is typical of the demands Chatterton increas­ ingly makes in this poem that the similes shall be highly visual and tonally germane rather than perfunctory or even comi­ cally subversive. The final section, Alfwold's impetuous pursuit of Harold's gigantic cowardly assailant Campynon, is effectively intro­ duced by announcing that we have reached a new stage of bat­ tle. The sun is again called in as reluctant witness; three hours of his course are run and, viewing the dead, he longs to plunge into the western sea and put an end to the day's car­ nage. Here one is tempted to read into the lines Chatterton's own impatience to be done with the problems of Hastings. William, not Harold, gives the command for close combat. "polished e furious?

"scattered

c Ioud

'many

B pencil

"slays or pen

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Harold is attacked by Campynon, ably defends himself, put­ ting the gigantic Norman to flight. Yet Harold, as general, cannot pursue Campynon, so he delegates the task to Alfwold. The flight of the coward and Alfwold's pursuit of him through the shamed Norman ranks are effectively heightened with epic similes, and Campynon is stopped only by William's threat to kill him. Alfwold, of course, triumphs and his subsequent bloody slaughters end the incomplete epic. Several things stand out in this final section. There are fre­ quent allusions to the Severn, appropriate enough to the Bris­ tol poets Turgot and Rowley and to the Bristol champion. Alfwold's slaughters are grand, but are not explicitly physical except in two stanzas of the section. Finally, Campynon's cowardly flight and Alfwold's precipitous pursuit may well portend the strategic Norman retreat and the rash Saxon pur­ suit whose consequences were to turn the tide at Hastings. One might guess that Alfwold's death in another such rash pursuit may have been planned as the turning point of English fortunes. Ifhe were to pursue a strategic retreat as impetuously and bravely as he here chases a gigantic coward, and if this early success should persuade "the ourt arraie of the thight Saxonnes" to break and follow him, the turning point of Eng­ lish fortunes would indeed have been brought about by an admirably brave but fatal rashness. Uncompleted as it stands, but with a probable direction and end established, and assuming a like proficiency with medium and techniques maintained throughout, what would be our response to "Battle of Hastings II"? The long opening section, the brief Stonehenge-Herewarde section, and this final portentous section on Alfwold are well done in them­ selves and one can imagine them effectively assimilated into the overall epic idea hypothesized. The second section, on Alfwold and the van, and the Adhelm section are less success­ ful in themselves, being marred, respectively, by a more unre­ lieved focus on slaughter and an unassimilated tonality. Fur­ thermore, the St. Cuthbert-Kenewalchae half of the Adhelm

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section is introduced so abruptly after the carnage of section two that one feels that the seams of the poem are here botched. The total heroic expression Chatterton envisaged did not occur for him and it does not occur for us, in spite of substantial partial achievements and a sound total idea. We can imagine a total poem with much the same governing idea, worked out along the lines of sections one, four, and five, that could have succeeded. However, Chatterton's enthusiasm for the poem as it stands clearly lags. The omitted line 688, which might have been so easily filled in, tells us rather clearly that he has no heart for the hundreds more lines it would have taken to bring us to Harold's death. Chatterton had better things to do by late 1768, as we shall see, and one is not sorry that we have no "Battle of Hastings III." THE NEW HERO AS PATRON AND FRIEND Heroes embody dreams: Bawdin, St. Werburgh, the tourney­ ing knights, and the warriors of Hastings could have no place in Chatterton's everyday life. The beauty of his new mer­ chant hero William Canynge is that, in addition to his ties with that heroic past, he and Rowley together could embody Chatterton's eighteenth-century dream of an ideal fatherpatron for himself as son-artist. The merchant hero first ap­ pears, however, in the supporting role we have noted in "Bristowe Tragedie," his development limited to what was artistically useful to that poem. Even there he is more engag­ ing, if less heroic, than Bawdin. He thrice risks the king's anger, desisting in his appeal for Bawdin only when it be­ comes clear that Edward's heart is thoroughly hardened. Canynge's is a more human, flexible goodness than Bawdin's. He expects magnanimity in Edward; he is in tears at the thought of Bawdin's death and the plight of his wife and sons. He is, in short, a good man—courageous for the right, capa­ ble of pity and sympathy. Moreover, he has stature: although as mayor and head of the corporation he is bourgeois, he is easy with the king and the king owes him favors (11. 49-52).

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His conduct with Edward is respectful but never fawning. Yet there is no slightest hint in "Bristowe Tragedie" of those aspects of Canynge's life and character that appear in "A Brief Account of William Cannings from the Life of Thomas Rowlie Preeste."8 The account refers to both "Bristowe Tragedie" and "Battle of Hastynges I" in a somewhat deprecating way (11. 85-94). Thus, it is reasonable to place "A Brief Account" and the conceiving of the Canynge-Rowley relationship that is its subject between the composition of these two poems and Chatterton's eventual acknowledgment of them as his own. The account is more about Rowley than Canynge, but its heart is the productive, intimate relationship between the wealthy patron, a man of taste and generosity, and the poetconnoisseur-priest whom he generously rewards. This rela­ tionship not only added another dimension to Chatterton's merchant hero but also eventually engendered or deeply in­ fluenced most of the Rowleyan writings. It is usually for Canynge that Rowley writes the poems, plays, histories, chronicles, descriptions of antiquities, letters, catalogues raisonnes, "rolles," "discorses," "accontes," "emendals," "explayneals," and so on. Yet "A Brief Account" is also a lit­ erary work in its own right, with an effective shaping idea. The shaping principle is the narration of the developing re­ lationship between the two men. The events, given in chronological order, from Rowley's point of view, gradually define the relationship by tracing it from their early admira­ tion for each other to the intimacy with which they came to regard each other as age brought its problems and pains. The friendship begins with the generosity of Canynge and grows as he recognizes Rowley's taste and artistry. Rowley's collec­ tions are crucial to Canynge's designing and building Eng­ land's fairest parish church. Rowley helps Canynge avoid an unwanted marriage, the two are separated physically by the illness of Rowley's.age, and Canynge's generosity and Row­ ley's canniness enable the aging priest to end his life in cozy cheer. Two elements might be thought to quarrel with this shap-

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ing principle. The piece serves the secondary function of giving occasion and sequence to Rowleyan works hitherto composed or envisaged by this time. This does not clash, however, with the story of patron and artist, nor will it at all account for the detail that gives "A Brief Account" its tex­ ture, tone, and impact. Second, the odd inserted narrative of the artist-monk Blondeville, which comprises over onefourth of the account, seems at first a pointless digression. With its father and son monks, however, and Blondeville's retreat from the perils of woman to art and celibacy, it is a reinforcing echo of what we are told of Rowley and Canynge in the narrative proper. The basic narrative texture is a gossipy, relaxed summary style. Within this are set briefly rendered scenes, equally gos­ sipy, usually with a hint of the comic. Near the start, for example, the tone of the relationship is set by a dialogue in which Rowley undertakes a manuscript-collecting trip for Canynge. The other rendered scenes give us Canynge's thanks for the trip, Rowley's close call with Mrs. FiscampPelhamme, and his coup over his "House by the Towre." He cleverly leases very cheaply a second house in disrepair (just two turnings from the Chatterton house in Pile Street). In doing so he outwits a man "greedie of Gaine" (the identical phrase appears in the second sentence to describe a family af­ fliction of the Canynges to which William was immune). "... wyth a fewe Markes Expences" Rowley puts the old house "up in a manner neat." "Heir I lyved warme." Some­ how one feels Rowley has got into Badger's digs, and we can imagine the greedy lessor Geoffreie Coombe shivering grandly in some version of Toad Hall. This loose narrative manner, with its brief bursts of lively scene, is as relaxed and warm as the friendship that is its subject. Aside from tone and narrative manner, the chief recurring element that defines the relationship between Rowley and Canynge is money. Canynge is generous with it, Rowley canny and cautious. About one-third of the account will be found to deal with money, reward, sinecure, or bargaining.

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As in Moll Flanders, almost every incident concludes with a statement, often quite precise, of the financial gain involved. The concern with gain is fully as intense as it is for the greedy, plausible targets of the 1764 fables, but here it is not ridiculed. Frankness about a friendship in which money is a clear sign of esteem has taken the place of duplicity and role playing. The one exception in the account might be thought to be an anec­ dote about an artist, "Badilo an Ytallyanne," who first refuses a moderate sum for "a Picture of greate Account," then im­ pulsively gives it away. However, this does not necessarily criticize the intense concern with money of the other artist Rowley: for both money is symbolic. Another pervasive motif also helps to define the relation­ ship. Women are a nuisance throughout—Blondeville's sister, Rowley's Mrs. Pelhamme ("I was faygne content to get awaie in a safe Skynne"), Canynge's threatened marriage to the Widdeville woman ("The Dangers were nighe"). Rowley is already in the church, Blondeville "toke on so that he was shorne," and Canynge too makes his escape by ordination. Money defines the friendship; celibacy makes it safe. One is reminded that there are no females in The Wind in the Willows. Whatever unconscious longing for a father, anxiety about his own feelings, and antifeminine strands may be here, they are in harmony with the governing concept suggested.

LYRIC CELEBRATIONS OF TRADITIONAL HEROES During approximately the same time—autumn 1768 to win­ ter 1768-1769—that Chatterton was starting, then abandon­ ing the four experimental epic fragments discussed earlier in this chapter, he wrote four powerful heroic odes, all of them demonstrating that the sublime mode of "On the Last Epiphany" (1763) could be successfully adapted to the Rowleyan world. The four are "Songe of Saincte Werburgh," "Songe of Sayncte Baldwyn," "Songe toe Ella," and "On Richard I." In each we see him drawing from the pageantlike

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scenic effects achieved in "Bristowe Tragedie." All four are elegant, structurally and prosodically inventive and sure; ap­ parently this mode was even easier for Chatterton in 1768 than it had been in 1763. As the heroic lyric mode is not now much appreciated, some aesthetic rethinking is required of the twentieth-century reader who wishes to comprehend these essentially "operatic" pieces.9 The "Songes" to Saints Baldwin and Werburgh (both saints Rowleyan fictions) were prompted by the 1768 opening of a new bridge between Bristol and Redcliff. Though they were sent to Felix Farley as appendixes to Chatterton's "Bridge Narrative," that piece is his imagined civic pageant at the opening of the 1247 "old" bridge in which the two songs had important places. Chatterton assumed (rightly) that the 1247 pageantry would be judged timely by the Felix Farley editor and that local curiosity would focus on the mysterious Dunhelmus Bristoliensis10 who had access to such ancient Bristolian texts. The editor printed only "Bridge Narrative" (the first Rowleyan publication), but that was quite enough bait to get for Chatterton henceforth the acquaintance and pa­ tronage of the local antiquarians George Catcott and William Barrett (see Life, p. 110). The "Bridge Narrative" is a detailed set of stage directions for an elaborate, colorful civic pageant expressive of Chatter­ ton's senses of a holy and heroic Bristol past and a commu­ nity of feeling in religion, art, and civic life. Rich detail brings the three parts of the narrative vividly to the mind's eye—the order of march to the bridge, the commemorative ceremony there, and the ceremonies, feastings, and sports that close the day. All has the orderliness and topographical specificity of the past so vividly imagined in "Bristowe Tragedie," and we shall meet similar sequential structures in subsequent works. For Chatterton, the past itself is a brilliant sequential pageant culminating in and giving significance to the present, and his brightly descriptive prose is an eloquent medium for such a feeling.

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The appended "Songe of Saincte Werburgh" is constructed as a temporal sequence. Its form encompasses the rapid Wer­ burgh narrative of the first two stanzas11 within a chronological pageant explaining the seventh- and thirteenth-century bridges at the site of Werburgh's miracle and pointing—with the closing allusion to doomsday—both to the 1768 bridge and to the end of Christian history. As for medium, the Rowleyan vocabulary is thickening and moving away from the conventions of the medieval revival. The strong four-beat line and the rhyme linkage of the fifth and tenth lines of each stanza could have been quite effectively set to clarions, citrials, or whatever thirteenth-century instruments one might choose to imagine. Once again Chatterton's music is effort­ less and transparent. "On the Last Epiphany," the initial St. Werburgh stanzas of his song, and the entire St. Baldwin song fall within a fam­ ily of forms—the celebratory ode shaped as narrative of heroic action. St. Baldwin's song is the most effective of the three. Though Baldwin is a warrior, the brawny heroes of "The Unknown Knyght" and the Hastings poems have been left far behind, for we enter Baldwin's mind. The Rowleyan language has begun to assume its full heroic potential, not for quaint antiquity but for poetic power, especially in lines 5-10. Brief as it is, "Songe of Sayncte Baldwyn" is Chatterton's first completely successful heroic poem. As with "Bristowe Tragedie," the effect is best described in cinematographic terms: it uses more effectively a technique noted in the 1764 fables. Our attention moves from the panorama of the hope­ less battle on the bridge, to a medium shot of the single bloody warrior saving the day, to a moral close-up of his face and thought, and then, in a final couplet, to his decisive final act, back at middle range, and his entire subsequent life, sud­ denly the most distant panorama. "Songe toe Ella," apparently written within a month of the saints' songs, is an extraordinary prosodic experiment as well as the beginning of Chatterton's invention from whole cloth

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of the early tenth-century Mercian hero who will be to Bristol history what Alfred was to the history of England. Ella later becomes, of course, the hero of the most ambitious Rowleyan work, the tragedy Azlla. The speaker of the ode, in transport, invokes Ella's spirit to inspire his song (11. 1-4), recalls his great triumph (cf. Alfred) over the Danes (11. 5-18), then moves into an eighteen-line, two-sentence apostrophe that brings admiration to its highest pitch. The structure of this apostrophe is curious: in the first thirteen lines that comprise the first sentence the speaker imagines the favorite haunts of Ella's spirit, settling upon six situations that bring out Ella's warlike guardianship of the city. The last line of the sentence (1. 32) comes as the climax, then, to a lengthy periodic sen­ tence, and is the central idea toward which the whole ode drives. Let Bristowe still be made thie Care Garde ytte from Foemen and consuming fire Like Avons Streme ensirk it rounde Ne let a Flame enharme the Grounde Till in one Flame all the whole World Expire (32-36). These last four lines have expanded the first, asking Ella to guard the city until doomsday's fire against the slaughter and fire of such foemen as the Danes. The total form, then, is (as is so frequently the case in the odes of Dryden, Collins, and Gray) ternary: invocationmemory-apostrophe, present-past-future, spiritual-physicalspiritual, vocative-descriptive-vocative. The middle section is in constant contrast to the similarities of the first and last sec­ tions. Ella's stature is conveyed by imitating the thought of an adulatory speaker who feels his own need for the spirit that moved Ella, remembers Ella's grandest deed, then feels still more urgently the need of the city for Ella's courage and prowess. Rowley is presumably writing during the Wars of the Roses, when the city is again threatened. The first section has affinities with the solution to the prob-

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Iem of praise in "A Hymn for Christmas Day." The middle section uses the panoramic narrative style first used in the heightened lyrical mode of "On the Last Epiphany" and sub­ sequently used more effectively in "Songe of Saynct Baldwyn." The sequence of imaginings that constitute the bulk of the apostrophe has no close parallel in earlier work, but it continues to reflect Chatterton's fondness for itemized sequences already seen in "Bristowe Tragedie," "Bridge Nar­ rative," and "Songe of Saincte Werburgh." The form seems to grow out of earlier short heroic efforts, taking, in Chatterton's hand, the standard course of development of odes "from action to image" that Norman Maclean has described.12 The sublime effect sought may possibly falter in the first two lines, but the poem recovers by the fifth line, strengthening with the Baldwin-like narrative of the battle at Watchet, and main­ taining this strength effectively to the end, where it concludes with Chatterton's favorite doomsday allusion. The most remarkable aspect of the poem is the prosodic experimentation. The relationships between sound and sense are so intricate that they must be studied almost as though the poem were a musical structure. After the first six lines, the poem falls—because of line length and rhyme patterns—into five stanzas rhymed a a b c c'b, with the possibility of stanzaic caesura after the third line of each. Because of variations in line length no single stanza is the same, and the effect of add­ ing and dropping feet to the pattern makes the stanza seem to diminish and swell: 334334 333333 445335 335445 445445. When we add to this the a a a a, b b, 4555 55 patterning of the first six lines, there is sufficient variation, in spite of the sixline "stanzas," to make the poem read as irregular Pindaric.13 Sound and total sense are only analytically divisible, as are thought and feeling and other such distinctions. We make the artificial distinctions in order to understand the complexity of what is happening. What Chatterton seems to have arrived at in lines 7-36 is a changeable musical unit—a sort of stanzawith-variations—in which the family resemblance of each

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member is quite clear and yet the variations in line length give each stanza its own music. The diminishing stanzas (11. 7-18) are used to reach a steady progression of music, idea (Ella's mastery over the Danes), and admiration. The gradually swelling stanzas (11. 19-36) move through a crescendo in music, a thickening of ideas (Ella's haunts), and a correspond­ ing heightening of feeling. At different points any one of the three variables may give the effect of pulling the other two along with it in its new direction. The total movement is to­ ward the fullest possible music within the chosen form, the most crowded thinking (Ella as guardian of Bristol), and the most heightened emotion. Thought and feeling are allowed to live and thrive in a patterned freedom because of the sense of patterned prosodic freedom the variable stanza can con­ vey. 14 "On Richard I," the last of the heroic odes, was apparently designed for Horace Walpole; a slightly simpler version of it was sent with Chatterton's first letter to him (see Works, II, 939-940, 954). As Walpole observed, these verses "are won­ derful for their harmony and spirit." The form, as in "Songe toe Ella," is ternary, though this poem is considerably less elaborate and, perhaps for that reason, more immediately ef­ fective. The three stanzas constitute three highly evocative sections that interact so as to heighten our admiration for Richard. In the first we see him shake his sword, the devasta­ tion wrought by that sword being suggested by the powerful imperatives "shake," "bare," "quace" (quash), and "worke." Such spontaneous aggressiveness is foiled, in turn, by the pas­ sivity satirized in the second stanza. There barons at home, seated on embroidered cushions, make war on cold with furs while Richard "yn thonderynge Mayle" is working the ruin of whole pagan cities. The third stanza parallels the first: we hear Richard sounding his trump and see his banner. The sound carries farther than did Roland's horn—"ynto ynter Londes." Fear flies sporting in its clamor. From the invocation-narrative-apostrophe structure of "Songe toe Ella" we have moved to a simpler apostrophe-satire-

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apostrophe structure. The principle and effect of the whole are to celebrate Richard by dramatizing the powerful feelings of an admirer who urges Richard on while thinking scorn­ fully of the comfortable barons at home who have not dared the crusades. The poem is attributed to a twelfth-to-thirteenth-century John, second abbot of St. Augustine's Minister in Bristol, a man who would have been Richard's contemporary. We are to assume that it was written in Greek and that this is Row­ ley's translation. Unlike that of "Songe toe Ella," its prosody is transparent and unelaborate, though very sure. Our atten­ tion is drawn rather to the contrast to the barons and to the vigorous diction and imagery that reinforce it. The Rowleyan diction has radically thickened and is at once more concrete and more grandly suggestive than even the strong diction of "Songe toe Ella." There is, especially, a vague and powerful suggestiveness in the personifications: "Feere flies sporteynge yn the Cleembe [sound, clamor] I Yn thy Banner Terrour standes." The overall tendencies of the celebratory odes, from "On the Last Epiphany" through "On Richard I," have been to­ ward the evocation of the concrete, highly connotative act or gesture and toward the simplicity of clear, contrasting struc­ tural units. The subjects simplify too. Though Ella's and Richard's gestures embody their characters, there is in their odes none of the dramatization of thought that gave such sudden depth to St. Baldwin's song. The Rowleyan language has thickened steadily and has become less archaizing and conventional, more authentically individual. The prosody has been sure throughout, asserting itself only in the complex music of "Songe toe Ella," which Saintsbury found "rather terrible. .. Rowleyfied Pindaric," but which I would argue as being complexly functional as well as highly interesting con­ sidered simply as music. Chatterton's achievement in the celebratory ode, which now ceases, will bear comparison with that of any eighteenth-century poet. I am inclined to think, however, that the mode came too easily for him and

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did not, therefore, lead to productive, if faltering, artistic struggles such as we have seen in his epic attempts and such as we shall now begin to study in his Rowleyan dramatic pieces. THE DRAMA OF HEROISM OLD AND NEW It seems clear that Chatterton worked out a theory of the his­ tory of English drama that would culminate in Rowley's Allla. We have inferred a similar theory of prosodic history from the uncertainty and irregularity of pre-Rowleyan pro­ sody as compared to Rowley's correctness. There, however, Chatterton wrote works illustrating pre-Rowleyan prosody throughout the Rowleyan year, whereas the first two Rowleyan plays would seem to point by design toward Azlla , the third play. This suggests that Ailla was planned, perhaps as early as "Songe toe Ella," in which the hero is already a war­ den of Bristol Castle triumphant over the Danes. Each of the five Rowleyan plays has its own artistic nature and the last two—"The Tournament: An Interlude" and "Goddwyn: A Tragedie"—do not advance Rowley's dramatic technique be­ yond Azlla. With the first two plays, however—"The Merrie Tricks of Laymyngetowne" and "The Parlyamente of Sprytes"—there is quite clearly the extraformal intention of illustrating a theory of dramatic development. In note 21 to "The Rolle of Seyncte Bartlemeweis Priorie" we find Chatterton's classification of early English drama, and in "The Antiquity of Christmas Games" this note was expanded for publication. The essence of the theory is that medieval English drama consisted of, first, miracles and mummeries for the vulgar acted by minstrels and mummers and, second, "the more noble representations comprehended under the name plays" for the nobility acted by monks. "Plays" fall, in turn, into two classes: the private perform­ ances were family histories or "merely relations [with] only two characters, as that in Weever's Funeral Monuments"; the superior public exhibitions gave the life of a pope or the founder of a monastery. It is not difficult to fit the first three

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Rowleyan dramatic pieces into this scheme. All are "plays," but "Merrie Tricks" is a "mere relation," "Parlyamente" cel­ ebrates the founder of a church, and Ailla goes beyond these categories to celebrate a warrior hero in full-scale tragedy. Meyerstein {Life, pp. 192-193) located the Weever reference: it seems likely that this DameJohan of Acres dialogue is Chatterton's starting point for his theory that the drama developed from stanzaic two-person dialogue to full-fledged "Tragycal Enterlude, or Discoorseynge Tragedie." Chatterton's theory presented one substantial problem. There was no great body of these "plays" to justify the five of them that he wrote for fifteenth-century Bristol. His solution was to invent two libraries full of them. "The Rolle of Seyncte Bartlemeweis," ostensibly a description of a Bristol priory specializing in the treatment of leprosy, actually spends more time discussing the contents of the priory's two librar­ ies. In the "Acke Chambere," among various medical "rolles," we find many plays specifically cited and many others specified merely by kind. The general impression con­ veyed is that the two libraries of a small medieval hospital had more plays than any other sort of work, even religious or medical works. The "Rolle" was apparently written as Chatterton was planning Ailla (see Works, II, 903, 924). JElla is by far the most ambitious Rowleyan work, and one function of "The Rolle" (it has been considered in the second chapter as a landmark in the total Rowleyan world) was to justify the ap­ pearance of such a play in the fifteenth century by surround­ ing it with scores of imaginary predecessors. Internal evidence in the three plays indicates specifically the stages in dramatic development. It is a matter of titles, osten­ sible authorship, scene construction, and the dramatic use of the Rowleyan ten-line stanza. The first play (Oct.-Nov. 1768) is alluded to in "Discorse on Brystowe," which quotes part of "the pleasaunte Discoorses of MaystreJohn a Iscam hight the Merrie Trickes of Laymyngetowne . . . which I metten with in my Journeies for Maystre Canynge." This fragment is di­ vided into three "Discoorses" in each of which two or (once)

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three characters appear. The full Rowleyan stanza with alex­ andrine is the basic prosodic unit. It is never broken by change of speaker, though if a speech is longer or shorter than ten lines or multiples thereof, Iscam adds nonstanzaic lines or couplets (11. 31, 84-85, 118-121), uses the concluding alexan­ drine before the tenth line (49), or extends the stanza with an added decasyllabic line and a second alexandrine (106-107). After finishing "Merrie Tricks" Chatterton apparently de­ cided to bring Iscam into the Canynge-Rowley circle, perhaps so that he and Rowley could collaborate on the next play, "The Parlyamente of Sprytes" (Oct.-Nov. 1768). Con­ sequently Chatterton has to change his story about "Merrie Tricks," since the "Discorse" allusion could be taken to mean that it was an old play. Chatterton's second note to "Parlyamente" reads, therefore, "John Iscam . . . was a Canon of the Monastery of Saint Augustine in Bristol, he wrote a dra­ matic Piece call'd 'The Pleasaunt Dyscorses of Lanyngeton' also at the Desire of Mr. Canynge (Rowley being then collect­ ing of drawings for Mr. Canynge) he translated a Latin Peece call'd Miles Brystolli into English Metre." With this revision of the history of "Merrie Tricks" the title to the second play can now read "An Entyrlude . . . on dedicatynge the Chyrche of Oure Ladie of Redclefte—hight, the Parlyament of Sprytes. Wroten bie T. Rowleie and J. Iscam." "Parlyamente" is a continuous pageant, so there are no scene divi­ sions, just a series of speakers. When the Rowleyan stanzas (without the alexandrine and with varying rhyme scheme) begin at line 89 they are again not broken up by speaker changes, though couplets may be dropped or added occasion­ ally. The climax of the three-phase development, Azlla: A Tragycal Enterlude: or Discoorseynge Tragedie, wroten bie Thomas Rowleie (Dec. 1768-Feb. 1769), is all Rowley's except for a pleasantly naive song by Syr Thybbot Gorges. In Allla each scene has as few or as many characters as the fairly complex action requires. Also, the Rowleyan stanza is divided freely, the stanza at lines 1183-1192, for example, containing nine

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distinct speeches. We have moved, then, from "Discoorses" through "An Entyrlude" to "A Tragycal Enterlude, or Discoorseynge Tragedie"; from a pre-Rowleyan play, through a collaboration by Rowley and Iscam, to Rowley's dramatic masterpiece; from scenes of two or three people, through a pageant of several sequentially appearing speakers, to the full play scene with whatever speakers are required; from a stanzaic drama in which the basic prosodic pattern determines the length of speeches, to one in which the pattern is freely bro­ ken into speeches of any length. Chatterton has extrapolated his history of English drama from the Weever piece and has illustrated it so that Rowley is once more the high point of a long literary development. Lamington (Chatterton's usage allows us any conceivable spelling) is a version of a traditional English hero—a seagoing Robin Hood. He is a banished man; he decides to fleece the rich London merchants, the "Cockneie Shreeves," who have impoverished him; he has "trustie menne in Selwoods Chace"; his constant antipathy is toward the greed of the rich and mighty of London. The closest connection to the Robin Hood legend may be in Discoorse 3d. of "Merrie Tricks," in which Lamington recruits one Robynne, who once was great and who now resolves to throw in his lot with Lamington. Lamington prophesies that Robynne will someday lead his own band: "I Iyke thie Courage and 111 telle thie Doome / Thou wylte unyore [soon] a brave Capytayne bee." It seems likely that along with all the other functions being performed by this strange tale of a Robin Hood of the waves, Lamington is here recruiting and will train one who will later move northward, find his own Nottingham shreeve, and operate in Sherwood's Chace. We have seen that the dramatic format of "Merrie Tricks" was probably suggested by the discourse quoted in Weever's Ancient Funerall Monuments. It seems likely that Lamington's modus operandi and the two cockney merchants also come from Weever's account of the deeds of Walworth and Philpot

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during Wat Tyler's rebellion. We are also told there that Philpot "manned forth a Fleete, at his own charges, to scoure the narrow Seas of such Scottish, French, and Spanish Pyrats, as had done much villany by their often incursions, to many of our English ports, and Harbours." 15 The connections with Chatterton's merchant hero Canynge are manifold. Unlike the greedy hypocrites of the 1764 fables, Lamington is a winning rogue. Yet he is another reverse of Canynge's mercantile wealth and beneficence. Lamington robs and is sentenced for his misdeeds to build a church on the future site of St. Mary Redcliff. George Catcott tells us of "an almost universally receiv'd" tradition that Canynge was a pirate and that he obtained pardon from Ed­ ward IV only by building Redcliff Church ( Works, II, 864). Chatterton's "Merrie Tricks," then, is a rational explanation of the tradition that transfers the piracy from Canynge to Lamington without losing the connection with Redcliff Church. So much for the strange subject of "Merrie Tricks" and its probable sources and motivations. Although "Merrie Tricks" is a fragment, the intended overall form is not difficult to reconstruct, since we are given Lamington's entire story in "Discorse on Brystowe." There he is honorably employed by the crown but, spending all and taking to evil courses, he is condemned to die, then pardoned and banished. He stays in England, plays his knaveries, is again taken, pardoned, and enjoined to build a church in Red­ cliff. He dallies, is threatened with death, and makes a sorry beginning at the wall of the new church. Hejoins the Yorkists and is killed. "Merrie Tricks" was probably planned to treat the story from the banishment through either the second cap­ ture or the comic efforts toward building a church. What we apparently have, then, is the beginning of the first merry trick of a picaresque drama presented so that we can enjoy Lamington's roguery because it is justified. This is Chatterton's first dramatic attempt, anticipated only by the theatrical handling of scenes in "Bristowe Tragedie." In comic writing we have nothing before "Merrie Tricks" but the 1764 writing and three trivial pieces of Rowleyan

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bawdy.16 In "Discoorse 1st." Lamington explains his deci­ sion to defy the banishment and repay the cockney merchants who have battened on him in more prosperous times. He will assemble his men from Selwood forest and they will become "Cockneies of the Waves"; the clear implication is that Lon­ don merchants are nothing more than city pirates. Lamington is a Bristol hero and Bristol shall profit from his piracies against London. It is notable also that Lamington sees himself in a romantic-historic perspective: "My Bark the Laverd [lord] of the Waters ryde / Her sayles of Scarlet and her Store of Golde I My Men the Sexonnes I the Hengyst bee." The second "Discoorse" presents Lamington's intended victims, Philpot and Walworth, conversing in badly mangled scraps of schoolboy Latin intermixed with anxieties about cuckoldry (Lamington has been sleeping with Walworth's wife) and credulous gossip about the weather. They eventu­ ally zero in on Philpot's plan to sell in Bristol what he has cheated Lamington of in London. The talk and the overmas­ tering greed are typical of Chatterton's early and late handling of the merchant class of both Bristol and London. In the third "Discoorse" Lamington recruits Robynne and sends him to Bristol to rent a warehouse for spoils taken at Watchet. He charges him to see if Philpot and Walworth are there and vows revenge on them. The whole of the fragment is lively. The necessary exposi­ tion is interestingly handled in Lamington's speeches, and substantial shenanigans are in immediate prospect. Laming­ ton will surely out-cockney his two victims in Bristol, re­ covering his own goods and more. One can see no artistic reason to break "Merrie Tricks" off here. However, it has al­ ready achieved two extra-artistic tasks—to illustrate the first stage of the stanzaic drama and to clear Canynge's name of the piracy rumor that tradition had connected with his build­ ing of RedclifFChurch. Having accomplished this much, it is equally probable either that Chatterton's enthusiasm for the long task ahead gave out or that he never intended more than this illustrative fragment of a pre-Rowleyan dramatic "Dis­ coorse."

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We have already noted the rather stiff dramatic use of the Rowleyan stanza and its probable function in pointing toward Allla. Note that Philpot and Walworth's city small talk and trite Latin are judged unworthy of this stanza. The language, on the other hand, is rich and vigorous: "Merrie Tricks" con­ tinues Chatterton's steady development of the versatility and individuality of the Rowleyan medium. Chatterton's second play, "Parlyamente of Sprytes," is the first considerable celebration of Canynge's deeds, since "Brief Account" was primarily concerned with the relationship be­ tween artist and patron. Traditional heroes are valorous men; their heroism is embodied in physical deeds and generous thoughts. The deeds of Chatterton's new wealthy hero are acts of godly munificence; they combine civic and national pride, piety, and a sure taste for art on the grand scale. Canynge's greatest deed was St. Mary Redcliff, and in "Par­ lyamente" Chatterton calls up a procession of ancient temple builders, traditional English heroes, and earlier Bristol build­ ers to bear witness to the splendor of Canynge's unprece­ dented feat. Of this "Entyrlude" we have George Catcott's testimony that when they parted one evening Chatterton was "totally depressed; but he returned the next morning with unusual spirits. He said, 'he had sprung a mine,' and produced a parchment containing the Sprytes. " The parchment is gone, but the implication is that in one night Chatterton found the idea of "Parlyamente," wrote it, and made an antiqued parchment copy! The mine, I take it, was the idea of a parade of ghostly witnesses who would testify to Canynge's great­ ness. We have already noted Chatterton's penchant for this sort of sequential structure; now it appears in the dramatic form perhaps earlier implicit in the theatrical effects of the "Bristowe Tragedie" and "Bridge Narrative" processions. If my assumption that Ailla is already the ultimate target is cor­ rect, "Parlyamente" fulfills simultaneously three purposes: it is the middle stage between the dialogue drama of "Merrie Tricks" and the fully formed stanzaic tragedy that Chatterton

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planned; it provides an elaborate way to glorify the new hero, whose deeds are not of the sort that naturally engenders plots; and it ties this new sort of hero to the old heroism through the traditional heroes who appear in "Parlyamente" speaking in Canynge's praise. The informing principle is, as noted, the parade of ghostly witnesses, each in some way qualified to speak so as to mag­ nify Canynge. To put the principle more succinctly, it is the dramatic expansion of a pageant ode celebrating Canynge. Since all witnesses are spirits, Queen Mab presides, acting in the opening as intermediary among her mischievous "Leege Men," the spirits of the dead, and the mortal audience. She acknowledges that even her curious rounds have shown noth­ ing as beautiful as Redcliff Church. However, since there can be little suspense in her procession of testifying sprites, how is Chatterton to make 268 lines of this paean to Canynge inter­ esting? What witnesses shall be called and in what order? Nimrod speaks for farthest antiquity: his tower aspired to heaven and wrought confusion, whereas Canynge's spire honors Christ's reconciliation between man and Heaven. Elle's poignant envy of living worshipers keenly evokes the aes­ thetic and religious power of Canynge's St. Mary's. (Note that this is the second time his spirit has been called from the grave.) Burton, builder of the second church on the RedclifF site, is glad his own church was pulled down to make way for Canynge's and his imagining of Time's future depredations on Canynge's church is perhaps the most evocative poetry in "Parlyamente": But if percase Tyme of hys dyre Envie, Shall beate ytte to rude Walles and Throckesa of Stone; The faytourb Traveller that passes bie Wylle see yttes royend auntyaunte Splendowre shewne, Inne the Crasdc Arches ande the Carvellynge And Pyllars theyre Green Heades to Heaven rearynge— (11. 140-146) "heaps "broken, old

b Wandering

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The greenery soaring from the imagined ruined pillars is in­ deed a fine touch. Later Bristol builders follow: the usurer Segowen is driven by fear to build St. Thomas's as a loan to Heaven. Fitz Hard­ ing, proud of his kingly blood, built St. Augustine's (later Bristol Cathedral) but grants Canynge's church preeminence and Canynge himself essential, if not lineal royalty. Frampton, a merchant who built three churches, is endearing by diffidence in contrast to Fitz Harding's proud compliment. The pageant sags, however, with Gaunts' limp stanza, only partially relieved by the Knight Templar's confession that Temple Church was built with others' money, whereas Canynge's church was reared "from the Sweate of hys own browes." Merry Lamington, the last builder on the RedclifF site be­ fore Canynge, brings the train of witnesses to a strong comic conclusion. His "which of us is perfect" apology for his rogueries is fine comedy. Also, he manages, with characteris­ tic rhetorical trickery, to put a good face on his sorry apology for a church wall: since Canynge's church is so glorious, he is happy now that he didn't clutter up the site. Elle reappears, returning us to the living world of Canynge and his friends and alluding once more to doomsday. The pageant is a partial success, though Gaunts and the Knight Templar lose us briefly. The variety of praise, the characteriz­ ing of the witnesses—imaginative Burton, single-minded Segowen, proud Fitz Harding, diffident Frampton, slippery Lamington—and the individual appropriateness of the ac­ colades partially solve the basic problem of the chosen form. Prosodically no advance is made over "Merrie Tricks." Both use the Rowleyan stanza statically, both interlard other verse patterns, and "Parlyamente" drops back to the stanza without alexandrine of "Hastynges I," though retaining the tighter rhyme scheme of "Hastings II" and "Merrie Tricks." Iscam's prosodic crudeness (11. 1-18, 49-88) and his inept dramatic use of stanzas foils (except in Rowley's Gaunts pas­ sage) Rowley's expertise, for it would be overly charitable to

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call Iscam's uncertainties experiments in prosodic substitu­ tion. Chatterton is again illustrating Rowley's singular im­ portance in fifteenth-century poetry. He will grow shortly to the poetic and prosodic flexibility and elegance of JElla. Here also, Elle's presiding role, together with Rowley's earlier "Songe" to him, points in that new direction.17 For all of Chatterton's heroic starts in a variety of formal directions and subjects, no large-scale structures except "Bristowe Tragedie" and "Parlyamente" have as yet been brought to completion. Furthermore, "Bristowe Tragedie" gained its impact more as a series of scenes than as an interwoven ac­ tion, and "Parlyamente" was a pageant. His finished successes have been the short celebratory odes—the songs to Werburgh, Baldwin, and Ella. The more ambitious actions—"Ynn auntient Dayes," "The Unknown Knyght," the two Hastings poems, and "Merrie Tricks"—have been consistently aban­ doned near their beginnings or in midaction. Ailla, then, rep­ resents a major step forward. It has the finish and the spirit of the celebratory odes, and it builds on a large-scale structural idea that is effectively worked out in detail. We have already noted evidence of various kinds that both subject and form were long meditated. Ailla is surrounded by documents that tell us Chatterton knew that he had accomplished something very substantial. He did not at first show the play to his Bristol patrons; he sold Catcott a transcript only in April 1770, over a year after the play was completed (Life, p. 346). He had, apparently, larger plans. On 15 February 1769 he offered it to the London pub­ lisher James Dodsley,18 and his letter does not soft-pedal his pride in what Rowley has done. It is a perfect Tragedy, the Plot, clear, the Language, spirited, and the Songs interspersed in it, are flowing, poetical and Elegantly Simple. The Similes judiciously applied and tho' wrote in the reign of Henry 6th., not in­ ferior to many of the present Age. . . . the Monks . . .

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were not such Blockheads, as generally thought and . . . good Poetry might be wrote, in the dark days of Super­ stition as well as in these more inlightened Ages. Once again Rowley is the enlightened, correct, polished Pope of his century. His two Popean verse letters to Canynge, both prefatory to Ailla —"Epistle to Mastre Canynge on /Ella" and "Letter to the Dygne Mastre Canynge"—are, understandably, more modest. The excellences of these two poems will be consid­ ered when we discuss the development of Chatterton's verse epistles, but they are helpful to our present inquiry because they suggest what Chatterton wants us to see in Ailla. From the "Epistle" we learn that we are to expect truth and moral­ ity, not ribaldry, ostentation, or mindless jingling. The play will be free of pedantry and Latinizing—right English. It will avoid superstitious legendry catering to the laughter and tears of the tasteless rabble (of "Plays of Mirracle and Maumerys"). More positively and specifically, it will be "somme greate storie of a manne," and this is reiterated in the "Letter," which promises a boundless, vigorous, noble subject, not ploddingly limited to fact, but soaring, with Poetry, " 'bove trouthe of historie."19 The prosody will be masculine, not overly refined. The final prefatory piece, intended as a part of the performance itself, is the rime royal "Entroductionne." It echoes Queen Mab's opening speech in "Parlyamente": usu­ ally the faults of heroes are generously buried with them, but in this play we shall rouse /Ella up (for the third time) "before the judgment daie" to tell us what he now knows about "howe hee sojourned in the vale of men." Part of the soaring, then, will be the revelation of flaws, perhaps a tragic flaw, in the hero. As a matter of fact, /Ella's story and his very existence are purely the growths of Chatterton's imagination. The few his­ torical hints from which he worked and the gradual growth of the legend are given in detail in Works (II, 849-850, 872, 924-925), but Chatterton's major givens for the play are liter-

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ary (see Works, II, 925-926). The action is starkly constructed from conventional situations—nearly every scene could be as­ signed parallels from earlier drama, and yet the feeling of the whole is fresh and original. I believe that only Othello, Shake­ speare's battle scenes, and William Thompson's Gondibert and Birtha (1751) exert major direct influences, and even here ev­ erything is transformed by the shaping idea and by Chatterton's unique treatment. Works analyzes the prosody at length (II, 926-928). Suffice it to say here that though the Rowleyan stanza is still used for the set, measured effects required in description, soliloquy, and formal confrontation, Chatterton also demonstrates to the full its possibilities in handling episodes of conflict with their rapid exchanges of brief, charged statement. The stanza pre­ dominates, but variants of it are freely used and a considerable variety of lyric measures have the effect of being inlaid, each for its special purpose, within the predominant texture of the full decasyllabic stanza with alexandrine. The Rowleyan lan­ guage too is by now the completly responsive medium for whatever effects Chatterton needs; there are no traces of ar­ chaism for its own sake. Ailla is best understood, both in its informing principle and in its consequent artistic problems, as an eighteenth-century response to this question: "Where does one go from Othello?" We rightly think of Chatterton as a precursor of the romantic poets, but the extent to which he is at home in eighteenthcentury sensibilities has not been sufficiently noted. Chatterton uses Othello very much in the spirit in which Restoration and eighteenth-century dramatists adapted Shakespeare, very much in the spirit of heroic plays. Complexities of action, character, and situation are conflated, reduced, or eliminated; individualizing character detail is dropped; symmetries and echoing in plot, character relationships, and scene structure are underlined or emphatically introduced. Perhaps the best way to summarize the direction of change is to say that what in Shakespeare is individual, concrete, and humanly evocative gives way in Chatterton to operatic effects; human tragedy

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becomes grand—even grandiose—heroic tragedy. Moreover, it is in terms of action and of consequent decisions about char­ acter, thought, and diction that Chatterton attempts to move from Othello to his own tragic idea. The shaping idea that governs all subordinate elements in Chatterton's tragedy is that the ideal love between ^zElla and Birtha is fated to go unconsummated. What might have been a temporary separation, heightening the joy of their eventual reunion, is brought about, first, by a Danish invasion to which Mllz must respond, even on his wedding night, and, second, by Celmonde, whose hopeless passion for Birtha de­ cides him to renounce loyalty and personal honor and ravish her. Ila disposes of the first threat by complete victory over the invaders, and the heroic Danish leader Hurra disposes of the second threat by killing Celmonde just as he is about to rape Birtha. At this point, nothing would seem to prevent the joyful reunion of y£lla and Birtha. Yet /Ella'a character proves an insurmountable barrier: his groundless jealousy, somehow linked inextricably to his heroism, seals the fate of their love just at the point when all might have been well. The basic ways in which all of this grows from Othello are clear enough. In Shakespeare's play the trust of an ingenuous hero is diabolically played upon; as a result, an ideal yet very human love is destroyed, and the lovers, for whom we have wished everything good, perish. Othello's double weakness is his trusting nature and his contradictory potential for jealousy. It would appear that Chatterton felt that though jealousy was congenial to an heroic nature, the ease with which it was evoked in Othello by another detracted from his heroism. A hero, it would seem, should be autonomous, his faults, like his virtues, sovereign and independent. Heroic character must not be the toy of a plotter. Chatterton con­ ceives an action, therefore, in which his hero's love as first presented is as admirable and human as Othello's, in which his valor exceeds Othello's, in which the malignancy of another—though more clearly and singly motivated than

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Iago's—is finally powerless against him. The tragic jealousy must, in short, be self-engendered—a part of his heroism and inseparable from his character. Also, to take this autonomy one step further, ^Ella's jealousy acts only upon himself. Whereas Othello killed himself only when he learned that he had been tragically wrong in killing Desdemona, /Ella, hav­ ing learned (as he thinks) that Birtha is false, does not once think of killing her. Even his revenge is directed at himself. It is as though he had incorporated Birtha when he married her and so can only destroy himself. The derivation of the other principals—in essential traits, in role, and in their interrelationships—from the more complex characters of Othello is fairly obvious. Birtha is an abstract of Desdemona; no quadrant of her life or character unconnected to ^EUa is suggested. Celmonde is Iago with different and clearer motivation (borrowed from Roderigo) and hence lack­ ing Iago's spontaneous malignancy; also, he performs Iago's choral function. Even Egwina, Birtha's maid, has much of Emilia's function, though almost nothing of her individuali­ ty. As in the action, so with the characters: the lines are fewer and more heavily drawn; humanizing touches and chiaros­ curo effects are largely eliminated. The feeling, again, is operatic. The uses of Othello in the sequence and internal structuring of scenes is equally striking and takes like directions. Al­ though Chatterton does not divide his play by acts, the action falls quite naturally into four parts. He has, on the other hand, indicated scene divisions. Even though these divisions fre­ quently occur within a continuous action, they mark distinct stages of the action and consequent shifts in the focus of our concern and response. To demonstrate the power of Chatterton's art, I shall summarize the action by act and scene, noting the Othello borrowings and the changes wrought by Chatterton's own artistic idea. The first act (11. 119-547) established Celmonde as a serious threat, leads us to full sympathy for the love of ^Ella and

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Birtha, then pulls them physically and emotionally apart by the threat of the Danish invasion. The act concludes with the opening situation completely reversed. Celmonde has come from total despair to fresh hope for a dishonorable enjoyment of Birtha, whereas the lovers, jubilant and expectant at the start, have quarreled and, though reconciled, are driven apart by the sudden change of circumstance. Thus the major lines of action have been set going and the separation on which the whole play rests has taken place. Celmonde's opening solilo­ quy (I, i) catches our sympathy by collapsing Roderigo's balked passion and Iago's plotting, both from Shakespeare's first scene, into one speech. His despair at Birtha's approach­ ing wedding to /Ella is convincing, and we see that his poisoning threat is not idle. Celmonde is thus established as a complex, believable antagonist. Although the particular plot of poisoning is quickly rendered superfluous by the Danish invasion, Celmonde will eventually accomplish what he pro­ poses here, though through means he cannot now imagine. "Assyst mee, Helle! Iett Devylles rounde mee tende, I To slea mieselfe, mie love, and eke mie doughtie friend." He forshadows, then the total action of the play and his passion for Birtha is one of the two causes of the tragedy, both of which are necessary for the separation of the lovers to be irrevocable. Chatterton drops from the start such complicating lesser roles as those of Brabantio, the Duke, the Senate, and Cassio and any such complicating issue as the propriety of the love of his hero and heroine. Thus, what remains is to convince us that /Ella's and Birtha's love is as substantial and laudable as that to which Othello and Desdemona publicly testify in Othello (I, iii). Chatterton convinces us of this effectively and with originality in a sequence of three operatically structured scenes. The love debate of /Ella and Birtha (I, ii) makes us wish them well. He is jubilant; this will be better than beating the Danes, he says in effect. When Birtha modestly promises rewards meet for his devotion and kindness, he jocularly rants of the wonders he must have performed to deserve even a smile. Birtha brings him gently to earth:

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As farr as thys frayle brutylle 3 flesch wyll spere," Syke, c and ne fardher I expect of you; Be noote toe slacke yn love, ne overdeare; A smalle fyre, yan d a loude flame, proves more true. He has the enthusiasm, vigor, and zest of a young bride­ groom, and she is warm, loving, and above all full of good sense. She might have been drawn from Pope's characters of perfection in woman—from Clarissa's speech in The Rape of the Lock or the conclusion of the second Moral Essay; good sense will surely here preserve what beauty has gained. It will be, we see, a good marriage, and the more we wish this young couple well, of course, the greater our anxiety at their separation, the greater our pity at the tragic conclusion of their love. Moreover, Celmonde's opening soliloquy has en­ sured that anxiety for them will be with us from the start, a somber ground bass to their love duet. If we needed reminding, Celmonde breaks in upon them (I, iii) with minstrels, fulsome well-wishes, and a jocular invita­ tion to drink the (poisoned) ale. Then the minstrels' songs be­ gin. We shall later consider their separate structures with those of Chatterton's other pastorals; their function in this scene, however, is both subtle and essential to our sense of what is about to be lost. Prosody and style are in marked con­ trast to the Rowleyan stanzas of the play proper, which are narrative, declamatory, full of action and impassioned debate. The songs quit this heroic world, serving something of the function of subplot in Elizabethan drama or of chorus in Greek tragedy. Their actions and thoughts lend broader rele­ vance and profounder meaning to the central issue of the play—the love of Birtha and y£lla. The love debate between Robin and Alice brings love to the pastoral, the simplest human level. Like JElla, Robin is impetuous—nature courses in him, urging him to immediate consummation. Alice calls on nature too, but she is cautious. They hear opposing lessons in the birds' songs, and Alice a brittle

b allow

C such

d than

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makes the necessary distinction between man and the rest of nature. Alice's good sense conquers Robin's impetuosity; they marry and live in love and goodness. The song has the odd effect of taking the heroic love that we have just been witnessing, bringing it to the broadest human level, and suggesting at the same time the teasing courtship and the mock-real struggles that must have preceded our own first glimpse of Birtha and JElh. Throughout the song, nature— landscape, birds, plants, animals—supports the love that Robin urges and with which Alice happily but judiciously complies. In the second song, both nature and the appetites and joys of human love are handled on a philosophic level. The first minstrel complains that in spring, with nature at her fairest, he still feels a void. Adam felt this void in the garden, replies the second minstrel: he needed "an help meet" for him. Take a wife into your arms and even winter will have a charm for you. The third minstrel complains that his joy in golden, fruitful autumn is "purpled" (both the autumn color and perplexity are suggested) with care. Here the second minstrel gives a fuller answer. It is desire you feel: only angels are free from it, and it can only be quieted by woman. Woman was made from a part of you—with much water and little fire— and so women too seek man to make themselves complete. Man without woman is savage, but woman is so fed with the spirit of peace that, tempered with this cool, angelic joy, men become angels. 20 So take a wife to your bed. Thus the im­ plicit moral of Robin's and Alice's coming together is given a philosophic dimension, and this is managed, through the first and third minstrels' complaints, without losing the connec­ tion with nature and nature's urgings. The effect of the songs so far has been to humanize and then to deepen our sense of the heroic love of JEIla and Birtha. We are to be brought back from ideas to people, though, and this is done most effectively in the third song—a simpler pastoral in which Elinor celebrates the joys of marriage. She was happy with her father "yn marrie Clowddell," duties

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there were at her pleasure, but she still wanted something she could not name. Thus the theme of the second song, the emp­ tiness of the heart before love comes, is brought down to the everyday, seen this time from the woman's side. As if to prove Elinor's joy, Lord Thomas returns from the hunt, she puts up her knitting, and "wee leave hem bothe kyndelie embracynge." In view of the previous songs, "kyndelie" must here refer, as it so often does in Chatterton, to the impulses and appetites of nature as well as to mutual kindness. The songs have made a pause—a musical A B A—and that is surely their intent; we are to relish the full implications of the marriage that has just taken place and that ought shortly to be lovingly and "kyndelie" consummated. Yet the separat­ ing forces are now introduced at full strength. We are brought back to thoughts of Celmonde's sad scheme when Ailh says, "Come, gentle love, we wyll toe spouse-feaste goe, / And there ynn ale and wynne bee dreyncted [drowned] everych woe." This is only prelude to the entrance of a more pressing reality and its demand for action which shall effectively break up all the joy that has been promising (I, iv). The messenger's announcement of the Danish invasion at Watchet saves the three principals from Celmonde's deadly cups but also intro­ duces the train of events that shall tear ^lla and Birtha apart physically and then, with Celmonde's and Ella's help, emo­ tionally, and shall insure that they are brought together only in death. We must, therefore, watch closely this separation. The immediate division of minds takes the form of an impas­ sioned, almost formal love vs. honor debate. The apparent postponement of the joys so long anticipated tests them both. Here their relative strengths are reversed. ^Ella is stronger, more stable than Birtha; he is angered by the separation but knows what honor demands of him. Birtha tries recrimina­ tions, threats, and evasions, but he calls her gradually to sor­ rowful assent, and he, seeing her once more herself and mis­ tress of her grief, has an even more poignant sense of what he must now lose. This tense scene of cross-purposes, re­ proaches, and sad reconciliation evokes two responses—a

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sense of the intensity of their love and of the irresistible pull of /Ella's vocation. She loves the hero in him, and he could not love her half so much, loved he not honor more. As they part Birtha has a premonition of the truth: "He's gon, he's gone, alass! percase [perhaps] he's gone for aie." As if to underline the difficulty of /Ella's honorable choice, Celmonde's soliloquy (I, v), closing the act as he opened it, reveals his exultation at this sad interruption of /Ella's and Birtha's love: "I see onnombered joies around mee ryse; I Blake [naked] stondethe future doome, and joie doth mee alyse [free, let loose]." For ^Ella, honor's call is stronger than his love. This very heroism in /Ella is opportunity for Celmonde, who answers the call to warfare readily enough, but abandons honor, love, and friendship in the face of the even stronger pull of his appetite for Birtha. Again Chatterton has united in him the secret lover and the plotter: what Celmonde says draws from Roderigo and Iago in the final scene of Shakespeare's first act. He will "follow these wars," as Iago counseled Roderigo, but he foresees such new changes at Birtha as Iago promised Roderigo. Iago revealed the direction of his schemes at the close of the first act: The Moor is of a free and open nature That thinks men honest that but seem to be so; And will as tenderly be led by th' nose As asses are. I have't! It is engend'red! Hell and night Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light. Celmonde likewise denounces honor and invokes Hell to steel his soul for unspecified strange and doleful deeds. The second act (11. 548-950) is all battle, a triumph that fully justifies /Ella's heroic reputation. What the storm does to the Turkish fleet between Shakespeare's first two acts is here in­ flicted upon the Danish invaders by /Ella's valor and leader­ ship. For the most part, the battle is reported, not presented visually as in the two versions of Hastings. Our attention is focused, therefore, on the characters of the warriors and the

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quality of their heroism. The symmetries and polarities of structure and response are further strengthened. The abrupt transition to the Danish camp is skillfully managed by having the Danish priest invoke his gods in incantatory rhythm, much as Celmonde has just invoked Satan. The core of the first act, the love debate interrupted by the messenger and so shifting to a love-honor debate, is here echoed by the violent fly ting of Magnus and Hurra, interrupted in its turn by news of Ella's approach. The quarrel between the two Danish leaders also offers a telling parallel to ^EUa and Celmonde. ^Ella, truly heroic, reluctantly turned from love to honor, whereas Celmonde vowed to sacrifice love, honor, and friendship to appetite. Hurra will speak his valor in deeds, whereas Magnus speaks valor but will act cowardice. The lengthy Magnus-Hurra Flyting (II, i) has other essen­ tial functions. The Danes become something more than the enemy—this lesson was learned from Chatterton's mistake in "Battle of Hastynges I." The Danish leaders are two individ­ uals—Magnus boastfully anxious, Hurra scornfully valorous, ready to chance his life in battle—and this distinction is to be used by Chatterton. Magnus's panic about ΆIla insures the English victory. Hurra, on the other hand, must be estab­ lished as a man of heroic deeds if he is to play the generous role allotted to him in the next two acts. Finally, the flyting, in addition to being good, thick rant, establishes the reputa­ tion ofi£lla in the mouths of his enemies. Since Chatterton has wisely chosen not to show Ella's slaughters on stage, this reputation is a major help in convincing us of his stature. The rest of the second act, except for Celmonde's final thirty lines, is all j£lla, and it contains some of the finest poetry Chatterton wrote. We have shifted from personal con­ frontation bringing out character under stress to the spon­ taneous rhetoric of individual response. All three remaining scenes in this act intensify our sense of ^Ella's instinctive heroism. The troops respond to his dignified, impassioned battle speech as we can imagine ourselves responding. The Danes, flying in terror, gasp out graphic testimonies to his

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might; and even Celmonde must celebrate him with undis­ guised enthusiasm. Act two is ^Ella's high point in the play, and we rejoice for him. He is Bristol's Henry V. The careful reader may consider lines 706-709, 720-739, 760-769, 770809, 824-830, and 865-870 if he has any doubts about Chatterton's poetic power. He may then consider how these same passages work toward the establishment of ^Ella as hero—in stirring an army to its finest effort, in the terror his strategy has worked in the enemy, and in the spontaneous admiration of the man who is his deadly rival. Chatterton's poetry, admi­ rable in itself, serves the larger purpose of building a poem. How ominous, then, is the plot we see forming in Celmonde's mind as his soliloquy again closes an act (II, iv). His intensely debating honor vs. gratification and again invoking Hell give us a sense of the strength and deviousness that op­ pose ^Ella's and Birtha's happiness (11. 941-950). Thus the act leaves us with simultaneous joy over ^Ella's triumph, antici­ pation over the lovers' reunion, and anxiety over Celmonde's threat. Here Chatterton has turned once more to the thought and diction of Iago. Celmonde concludes, "Nowe, iilla, nowe Ime plantynge of a thorne, I Bie whyche thie peace, thie love, and glorie shall be torne." This cannot but recall Iago's setting in motion (II, i), through Roderigo, of his plan concerning Cassio and his subsequent soliloquy concerning Othello's nobility, his own qualified lust for Desdemona, and his determination to "Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me I For making him egregiously an ass I And prac­ ticing upon his peace and quiet I Even to madness." The third act (11. 951-1253) takes us from general apprehen­ sion to surges of quite specific suspense. It is a series of rather short scenes at Bristol Castle, Watchet, and the night forest between. The action is taking its by-now independent course: Chatterton calls for help from Shakespeare only in the first scene. Here, as Birtha languishes for news of ^Ella, Egwina calls for the lovely minstrel's song "O! Synge untoe Mie Roundelaie" to divert her. The scene and its ironies are sharply reminiscent of the chamber scenes between Emilia

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and Desdemona. The minstrel's song foretells Birtha's fate, bringing her tragedy once more to the broader human scale of a shepherdess recalling her dead swain and dying at his grave. To underline the irony, it is made clear that Birtha does not catch the thrust of the song, so anxious is she about her swain. "Thys syngeyng haveth whatte could make ytte please; I Butte mie uncourtlie shappe [destiny] benymmes [bereaves] mee of all ease." We know that Celmonde is on his way, and this doubles our apprehension for Birtha. Though the roun­ delay borrows primarily from Ophelia's song, Desdemona's lines about Barbary's song might serve as epigraph for what this song forebodes for Birtha, just as "Willow" is so sadly portentous for Desdemona: She was in love; and he she lov'd prov'd mad And did forsake her. She had a song of "Willow." And old thing 'twas, but it express'd her fortune, And she died singing it. We move momentarily to Watchet to hear ^lla, as if in echo of Birtha's grief, fretting at his wound, finding no satis­ faction in victory, and determining to ride to Birtha immedi­ ately (III, ii). However, Celmonde is already with her (III, iii). He skillfully plays on Birtha's love for ^lla and her bravery to entice her away, ostensibly to Watchet so that she can re­ store Ai\L·. Meanwhile Hurra and the Danish remnant lurk in the forest between, planning rapine on villages and travelers (III, iv). The next scene of act three (III, v) brings suspense to its painful height as Celmonde's cruel intent gradually dawns on Birtha's terrified mind. She, like yElla in the final act, prefers death to dishonor, but the threat to her is real. Hurra hears her cries, kills Celmonde, and rescues her (III, vi). When he learns that she is Ella's wife he is tempted to kill her. Yet he recalls ^Ella's generosity to the Danish captives and a responding magnanimity, well prepared for in the first scene of the sec­ ond act, moves him: he will conduct Birtha to Bristol Castle and MIL·. This is again an echo of an earlier action. In the first

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act a love duet was interrupted, in the second the hate duet between Magnus and Hurra. Here Hurra providentially breaks in upon the lust-terror duet of Celmonde and Birtha. All now could be well. We sense the state of/Ella's mind, but we can hope that Birtha and Hurra will reach the castle in time. Our apprehensions about /Ella are vague, but it would be difficult to imagine a calm, wait-and-see attitude in the im­ patient hero who rode wounded from Watchet. The tempi and motifs of the first three acts have been set and constructed with musical acumen. The first began with Celmonde's frantic despair, explored the love scene joyfully and, in the three songs, deeply, building to the impassioned debate, increasing in tempo as passions struggled with each other, and climaxing in Celmonde's dark jubilation. In the second act, the measured anger between the Danish chiefs was displaced by the rapid surge of battle and Ella's triumph, concluding with more specific haste and frightening jubila­ tion as Celmonde sets his treacherous scheme in motion. In the third act, the shifts from place to place and the sudden changes of fortune further speed up the tempo, with the undersong of Celmonde's intent running throughout. Each new thrust of will and decision arouses fresh possibilities for good or ill. From the fourth scene to the sixth scene of act three, each new crossing of the contradictory purposiveness of the principals is an effective physical embodiment of our uncertainty—our hope and anxiety. All is moving toward the climactic return to the scene of the jubilant young love we first saw threatened, and in both tempo and feeling the fourth act is frantic and thick with revelations of the movements of hearts. The fourth act (11. 1254-1365) also brings Chatterton to the crucial artistic problem of his play, and he turns to Othello for his most extensive borrowings. /Ella must be brought to suicide because Birtha's absence convinces him that she is un­ faithful. His mind leaps to this conclusion from singularly scanty evidence. He arrives at the castle, reads the anxiety in Egwina's face, and when Egwina says Birtha is gone, he

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swoons away, then revives to say that he is no longer ^lla. He threatens Egwina in his rage for fuller information. When she tells him that last night she left Birtha pining for love, he leaps to suspicion: "Her love! to whom?" Nothing has pre­ pared us for this in ^lla. He gives Egwina's assurances the lie, momentarily doubts his fears, then is more certain—though with no further evidence—as he precipitately fills in the de­ tails of his jealous fantasy. A servant now gives an inaccurate account of a stranger's appearance and Birtha's departure, and this brings on Vila's strange speech before he stabs himself, a speech whose implications must be considered in some detail. At this point Birtha and Hurra arrive (IV, ii), she passion­ ately inquiring for /Ella. He coldly tells her that her foulness urged his death wound and she faints. Hurra now tells the story of Celmonde's attempt, and /Ella embraces the news. He has become himself again, but it is too late. Birtha revives, forgives his fear, and begins to fill in details of Celmonde's treachery and Hurra's magnanimity, at which /Ella exclaims, "Oh, I die content." When Birtha sees him dead, she says, echoing the minstrel's song, that his grave shall be her bridebed and faints upon his body. Coernicus, left to sum up the tragedy, asks who can fathom the workings of Heaven and fate and delivers Ella's epitaph. "/Ella, thie rennome was thie onlie gayne; I For yatte, thie pleasaunce, and thie joie was loste." We are left, then, with a serious artistic problem. /Ella had no sufficient grounds for his almost immediate suspicion, his jealousy, and his suicide. To put the situation at its full irra­ tionality, when the entire issue of the play is consummation, /Ella, unconsummated, dies "content." That Birtha was not another's is more essential to him than that she was never fully his. The reason for this folly would seem, strangely enough, to be Chatterton's admiration of and his consequent wish to compete with Othello, which he now turns to for help with the artistic problems that his operatic extrapolations from Othello have led him into. He must make the suicide be­ lievable without an Iago to engender and foster Ella's

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jealousy. Chatterton attempts to make Ella's spontaneous psychological combustion convincing by his heaviest bor­ rowings thus far. Before considering these borrowings in detail, let us con­ sider the conceptual development to this point of the idea of heroism in the play. Heroism has been defined by the actions of the hero, by the nobility of the rescuing Dane Hurra, and negatively, by the actions and thoughts of Celmonde, who is valorous in deed but base in mind. The sympathy between the heroic and the more broadly human has been explored in the four pastoral songs. The essence of the heroic has been displayed in Ella's speech before the battle and by the ac­ counts from both his military and personal enemies of his ac­ tions there. In addition to all of this, the concept of heroism has been constantly on the tongues of all principals, arising whenever the words rennome, honnoure, or myndbruch [injured honor] are used and whenever, as is very frequent, questions of identity arise. ^Ella's obsession with honor, reknown, reputation, identity, the whole code by which he lives, en­ genders the folly of his groundless jealousy, or so Chatterton would wish us to believe. Yet we must ask how such a hero can be so fearful of Birtha's love. This argues a serious defect in his character, and we can only agree when Ailla says of his feelings about Birtha, "This only was unarmed of all my sprite." Chatterton seems to have sensed, in fact, that "this only was unarmed of all" his play. We can argue that a jealousy that has even less motive than Iago's malignancy has support in Othello, for Emilia holds (and Freud with her) that jealousy is indeed self-engendered: Butjealous souls will not be answer'd so; They are not ever jealous for the cause, Butjealous for they're jealous. It is a monster Begot upon itself, born on itself. Jealousy, indeed, needs neither grounds nor an Iago. It can create its own conspiratorial world out of whatever evidence

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presents; all is evidence. Yet Emilia and this point of view generally can only be ironic commentators upon heroism; Chatterton stumbles when he incorporates Emilia's choral wisdom into the conception of his protagonist. Also, Chatterton seems to sense that an empirical view of jealousy sorts ill with the convention of a believable hero. Lacking an Iago to engine the mind of his hero, he turns to various expressions of violent states of mind in Othello to give convincing texture to his hero's violent folly. Line by line in the crucial last act he rings the changes on states of mind expressed by Othello, Iago, even Cassio, hop­ ing thereby to lead us to belief. He must work the changes in JEllz in forty-nine lines of his fourth act that Shakespeare worked, with Iago, through most of his play, but particularly in the 476 lines of the third scene of act three. Chatterton fails, I believe, to convince us that a hero must or even could be believably jealous without either grounds or malignantly worked trustfulness. yElla's tragedy (and Birtha's) is caused finally by a jarring flaw in his heroism, a flaw from which we cannot reason back to humanly admirable causes. The de­ tailed borrowings in this last act and especially in the fortynine lines in which jealousy seizes /Ella should be examined in detail. 21 It is abundantly clear that Chatterton has trusted primarily to the power of Shakespeare's diction to establish in a moment what required in Othello the long and complex machinations of an Iago. The argument thus far has been that, in shaping concept, major characters and their relationships, the development of much of the action, the internal structuring of several scenes, and finally the very language of his antagonist in soliloquy and his protangonist in extremity, Chatterton's tragedy has been an extrapolation from Shakespeare's. It is of interest that Chatterton's borrowings are of two quite distinct kinds. The borrowings in concept and character structure provide a start­ ing point for what is essentially a rival work. Ailla will "im­ prove" Othello according to the lights of a sensibility that I have called operatic. The borrowings in scene structure and

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language, on the other hand, while not clashing with this sen­ sibility, are devices for solving artistic problems raised in the working out of Chatterton's derivative overall concepts. We might schematize the two sorts of borrowing and their rela­ tionship thus: (1) C(A & Ch)

>"S

*"C(A&Ch)

giving rise to

[C Concept, A Action, Ch Characters, O Othello, S Sensibility, TC Chatterton, JE JEih, P Artistic Problems, T Treatment, Sc Scenes, L Languagel

The first borrowing is competitive, the second collaborative. The influencing work is first catalytic; then the artistic carrying-out of the derived concepts raises problems that re­ turn the borrowing artist to admired techniques of arrange­ ment and language in the source. Probably each instance of artistic borrowing will have its unique characteristics, but the emergence here of two quite distinct sorts of borrowing (or influence) ought to be distinguished. The mediating condition in both sorts of borrowing, but especially in the first, is Chatterton's "operatic" sensibility, which, I have suggested, groups him with his Restoration and eighteenth-century predecessors at least as closely as with such later travelers in this path as Rossini and Verdi. We ought here to summarize briefly the operatic qualities other than the abstracted action, the simplified character structures, and the starker scene outlines already noted. The emotional sequence of the tragedy is strikingly symmetrical. In the first act, both the songs with their pastoral echoes of heroic love and the complete reversal of expectation between Celmonde and the two lovers underline this symmetry. The act ends

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with Celmonde invoking Hell in incantatory rhythms, and act two opens with the incantations of the Danish priest. The core of the first act—the love debate interrupted and trans­ formed by news of attacking Danes—was echoed in the inter­ ruption of act two's hate debate (the Danish flyting) and (after the minstrel's song's foreboding) in the interruption of the third act's lust-terror debate. The skillfully building, interre­ lated and contrasting emotional tempi of the scenic progres­ sion have also been noted. There is symmetry also in the irony of the total action. The friend of act one proves an enemy, the enemy a friend. The love that was about to be joy­ fully consummated in act one is finally consummated in dou­ ble death. Protagonist and antagonist are heroic in all but love, and their profound flaws in love—lack of trust and cruel lust, respectively—show almost equal failure to understand the heroine. As in Othello one is tempted to feel the final tragedy as the heroine's, and both heroines die forgiving the folly that has destroyed them. Birtha's steady human sense and warmth have no room for operation in a world of vio­ lent, unthinking heroes. Perhaps the crowning ironic sym­ metry, though, is that of all the principals only Celmonde has achieved what he threatened at the beginning of the play. At the end of his opening soliloquy, planning the poisoning, he commanded, "Assyst me, Helle! Iett Devylles rounde mee tende, / To slea mieselfe, mie love, and eke mie doughtie friend." Perhaps a composer with a feeling for these operatic qualities could best bring out the strengths of Chatterton's tragedy and lend musical support to the weak element in its conception. Identifications and definitions of such sensibilities as the operatic are most valuable as literary-historical instruments when they locate gaps in our own capacity to respond to modes that once had the power to move. We find in ourselves now just such a resistance to the sensibility invoked in opera seria, heroic plays, Ossianics, and great odes (to name a few of what seem to me to be its eighteenth-century manifestations). Our disinclination toward the grand and the sublime would

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seem to block our artistic understanding of such works for the time being. Yet in the past the identification of sensibilities unsympathetic to our own has been a first step in coming to terms with them. At this point in our state of knowledge, the operatic sensibility represents an area of imperfect sympathy and, hence, of literary-historical ignorance. Shakespeare's way rings truer for us—not just because he is a greater poet, but because he is actually closer to our way of looking at things. This difficulty aside, JEIla can, I believe, stand confidently with Restoration heroic plays and head and shoulders above most of the tragedies of Chatterton's own century. Yet after Ailla Chatterton does nothing very good in the Rowleyan drama. The last two Rowleyan plays—"The Tournament" and "Goddwyn"—neither illustrate further developments in a theory of stanzaic drama nor embody any compelling prob­ lems or experiments in subject, treatment, or form. They will be dealt with briefly in the last section of this chapter, but we might appropriately ask ourselves here why Chatterton should apparently have lost interest in drama after the close approach to greatness in Alia. "The Tournament" is only perfunctorily completed and "Goddwyn" is scarcely begun. It seems to me quite possible that Chatterton's inability to publish Ailla may have been a major discouragement: if he could interest no one in something so good and so difficult to write, why bother? Why work his way through the hundreds of lines that effective completion of "Goddwyn" would have entailed? Artists who build from past achievements have, typ­ ically, attentive audiences; Chatterton, we must remember, had none. In his letter of 15 February 1769 offering Alia to James Dodsley, Chatterton, after appending lines 730-739 of /Ella's battle speech as a sample, writes, "If it should not Suit you, I should be oblig'd to you if you would calculate the Expences of printing it, as I will endeavor to publish it by Subscription on my own Account—" This is sad. It is doubtful, consider­ ing the modest circumstances of Chatterton's acquaintances,

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that he could have found enough subscribers to cover such costs. We do not know whether Dodsley answered this letter, though Chatterton's boastful letter to Stephens of 20 July 1769 ("My next Correspondent of note is Dodsley") and his first letter from London ("called upon Mr. Edmunds, Mr. Fell, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Dodsley. Great encouragement from them; all approved of my design") have been taken to mean that Dodsley gave some sort of encouragement. Yet the sample lines seem not to have captured Dodsley's fancy; if they had, we might have very different histories of Chatterton and of his poetry.

THE NEW HERO AND THE USE OF RICHES In the last chapter and in the third section of this chapter I tried to suggest why Canynge—father-patron—was so cen­ tral to Chatterton's Rowley fantasy. At the beginning of this chapter I noted the problem of making a viable literary hero of a merchant prince, particularly a Canynge, who, unlike Matt Bramble, needed no struggle or growth to drive him to open, energetic, and magnanimous beneficence. We return in this section to Chatterton's problem of finding modes, forms expressive of the life and character of this new sort of hero, one who understands the imaginative use of riches. There is no modal coherence among the three works directly con­ cerned with Canynge's life: the poet's subject must, for these, give us our narrative line. However, six shorter didactic poems on the use of riches—all in one or more ways sugges­ tive of how Chatterton imagined Canynge—constitute a co­ herent modal exploration. The early works centering on Canynge are prosaic and in­ formative. 22 Chatterton wrote nineteen letters—fifteen from Canynge, four from Rowley—that give intimate glimpses of Canynge's life and thought from his twenties through the last decade of his life. Most of them are illustrative documents, but the "Four Letters on Waywyke" (Oct.-Nov. 1768) are an ar-

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tistic whole—a revelatory episode from Canynge's life that comes close to being an epistolary short story. The shaping principle is to convey Canynge's gradual change of heart, in the York-Lancaster disputes of c. 1461, from neutrality to a decision that York and Edward are the necessary solution to the country's political chaos. The epistolary manner allows us to watch Canynge's mind wrestle with a serious problem; the subject ties him and Bristol to England's history and to Shakespeare. The "historical" germ of "Four Letters" is to be found in 3 Henry VI. At Mortimer's Cross (the closest Shakespeare's action gets to Bristol), Warwick promises Edward that he shall be proclaimed King "In every borough as we pass along" and that any who does not throw up his cap for joy shall lose his head (II, i, 193-196). As mayor of Bristol Canynge has received a letter from Warwick commanding such a proclamation. In the first letter, Canynge tells Rowley that though the Yorkists will get nothing from such a proc­ lamation, if he fails to make it he may well be killed. The councilmen won't take his advice because he has refused in the past to urge them to mean acts for gain. They will, there­ fore, assume that he is now urging on them a selfless act of no profit. He badly needs Rowley's advice. Rowley's brief reply is not helpful. If you had power, he says, I would urge you to stick with Henry to the death. Clearly Rpwley, preoccupied with antiquarian researches, 23 has not grasped the urgency of the situation, and Canynge must work it out without his friend's assistance. In the third letter we see Canynge shifting, for the good of the country, from neutrality toward a Yorkist position. He tells Rowley of Henry's incompetence and of Margaret's scandalous private life. To show that he has the measure of Margaret and Suffolk he recalls the amusing story of his father's outwitting an earlier Henry by gilding a brass dogchain as a royal wedding present. Canynge has seen this same chain, "withe the unwordieBrasse peepeinge oute to viewe the Goulde chaseynge," on Suffolk's neck, a fit collar for a son of

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a bitch. He notes that he has paid Henry two thousand marks for his trade charter and has lost a ship of a thousand tons in Henry's service: he owes Henry nothing. "I wys him well ynne a Pryours Coate ynne a Mynsterre and hys Queene and her Paramoures yn Repentance. Under Henrie we mote have peace but never renome—But doe not thynke I am Yorkeyst—" By the fourth letter Canynge has decided for Edward. Ap­ parently the cruel murder of Duke Humphrey (2 Henry V I ) has convinced him. Though the Bristol merchants are too tightfisted to help with money, he sends Warwick two hun­ dred marks and warns him about Bawdin's threat. Canynge wants to spare Henry but not Margaret and Suffolk—sixty of them would not atone for Gloucester's death. Bawdin keeps Bristol Castle too stoutly for Canynge to take it for Edward, but Canynge will undertake to imprison him in the castle if Warwick will promise to spare Bawdin's life. He sends his greetings to Edward, "who ys chevycynge [preserving] the Kingdome from the Oppressyon of a Leman [whore] and her Paramoures," and promises him three thousand marks when Canynge's fleet returns to Bristol. Meanwhile, Margaret will be kept out of Bristol and the castle. As Chatterton borrows from Othello to establish belief in Ella's jealousy, so here he borrows Shakespeare's treatment of Henry, Margaret, Suffolk, and Duke Humphrey to justify Canynge's decision for York and Edward. The change of heart is effectively shown through the letters: it is gradual and it is well motivated. Rowley is a Lancastrian both here and in "Bristowe Tragedie," and if Canynge is to be a hero, his Yorkist position and his dealings with Bawdin must be un­ derstandable and humane. He feels pity for Henry, grief over Duke Humphrey, and contempt for the cruelty, lust, and machinations of Margaret and Suffolk. He has taken exactly the side that the morality of 2 Henry VI would impose on a man of conscience, and he has shown himself an effective actor in national affairs. Chatterton manages to bring various side issues that inter-

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ested him effectively into this large national picture—the problem of Sir Charles Bawdin, the extraordinary knowledge of Roman Britain shown by Richard of Cirencester, the greed of the Bristol merchant class, the sly trick of Canynge's father, and the puzzling three thousand marks for Edward noted in the inscription on Canynge's monument in RedclifF Church. Nor is that all simply whimsy: the small Bristol de­ tails have been intimately woven into the national story. All in all, "Four Letters" is a remarkable tour de force as well as a convincing look at Chatterton's merchant hero effectively dealing with a political crisis. In "The Storie of Wyllyam Canynge" (Dec. 1768-Feb. 1769) Chatterton turns to Chaucer for a suitable form to cele­ brate Canynge's life. The subject—the whole importance of that life—is perhaps not sufficiently focused to result in an ef­ fective poem. The prosodic medium is the stave of six—very common in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and perhaps borrowed from Spenser, though Chaucer's envoy to the Clerk's tale is very'close to it, lacking only the final couplet in the rhyme scheme. The meat of Chatterton's poem is to be the narrative of Canynge's life. However, the problem that emerges is that the dream-vision frame, borrowed from Chaucer, considerably outshines the narrative proper. The poem opens with Rowley resting by a brooklet, lis­ tening to its gliding, "mottring Songe." He looks beyond to the "dyre Semblamente" of the ancient Avon, and imagines the more distant fierceness where the Severn "Rores flemie [frighteningly] o'er the Sand that She hath hepde." The time­ less flow and rhythm of these ancient rivers brings Bristol heroes to his mind—the warriors, saints, and builders with whom we are by now so familiar, v®la, Werburgh, "Fitz Herdynge, Bithrickus, and twentie moe." We have moved from the brooklet to the Severn, then from the warriors to "each dygne Buylder," and the scene is set for the appearance of "Trouthe," who shall put Rowley to sleep so that a dream of Canynge's life may climax his musings on Bristol heroes.

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The elegant description of naked Truth (11. 217-250) is the poetic high point. Her speech makes the connection among traditional heroes, artists, and the new hero, Canynge, that Chatterton hopes to establish. Full manie Champyons and Menne of Lore Payncters and Carvellers have gain'd good Name But there's a Canynge, to encrease the Store A Canynge, who shall buie uppe all theyre Fame Take thou mie Power, and see yn Chylde and manne What troulie Nobleness yn Canynge ranne The closest model I have found for the well-wrought vision framework is Chaucer's "Book of the Duchesse." The valley of Morpheus with its running waters might suggest the brooklet and the rivers. Chaucer falls asleep over his ancient book of Seys and Alcyone, whereas Rowley muses on ancient heroes. The noisy harmony of the birds in Chaucer's chamber performs something of the function of brooklet, Avon, and Severn in Chatterton's poem. The first three stanzas of Truth's dream, on Canynge's childhood, maintain the poetic power of the frame; a life story that kept the pitch of this early stretch would have done the trick for Chatterton. I saw hym eager gaspeynge after Lyghte. . . . He eate downe Learneynge wyth the Wastle Cake. . . . All tongues, all Carrols dyd unto hym synge Wondryng at one soe wyse and yet soe yingea Stanza 21, too, where Canynge and his wife choose love over affluence, is finely done: But Landes and Castled Tenures Goulde and Bighesb And hoardes of Sylver rousted yn the entc Canynge and hys fayre Sweete dyd that despyse To change of troulie Love was theyr Content "young

b jewels

c purse

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Stanza 19, however, is very flat, stanzas 20 and 22 are out of tone with the rest of the poem, stanza 23 is limply conven­ tional, stanza 24 begins to lean on exclamations of ineffability as a substitute for poetic strength, and the concluding stanza is prosaic, though an awakening bell has been borrowed from "The Book of the Duchesse." What has gone wrong is clear. For the first three-fourths of the poem—the frame and Canynge's youth—Chatterton is carried along by the shaping idea of a narrative within a dream-vision. However, he has not thought out Canynge's life clearly enough to keep up the poetic level, and in the re­ maining stanzas the story is loosely and abruptly filled out. The whole could have moved to an effective and appropriate climax in RedclifF Church, but the last quarter lapses into an ill-sorted mixture of ineffability and flat detail. The final poem from Canynge's life, "The Acconte of W. Canynges Feast" (May 1769) is brief, unambitious, and completely successful. It is a private poem by Canynge to his close friends Rowley, Iscam, and Gorges—much the sort of poem one might,imagine Horace, BenJonson, or even Swift writing to close friends. The we-cosy-few feeling is achieved by sharing the comedy of Canynge's plight as he dines with dull Bristol aldermen. Thorowe the halle the Belle han sounde Byelecoylea doe the Grave beseeme The Ealdermenne doe lye arounde Ande snoffele oppe the cheorteb steeme Lyke asses wylde ynne desarte waste Swotellyec the Morneynge Ayre doe taste Syche coyned theie ate. the Minstrels plaie The tyme of Angelles doe theie kepe Heie Styllee the Guestes ha ne to saie awelcome

c Sweetly

bredolent

(see Works, II, 972)

of cheer, food (see Works, glossary)

d daintily

e they

(being) still

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Butte nodde yerf thankes ande falle aslape Thos echoneg daie bee I to deeneh GyfRowley Iscamm or Tyb. Gorges be ne seen. An effective satiric description has been brought to deftly compliment the wit and clubbability of Canynge's circle. The comparison of the daintiness of hungry aldermen to asses sniffing the morning air is comically evocative. The stanza combines the stave-of-six rhyme scheme, doubled, with oc­ tosyllabic lines punctuated by a final decasyllabic, which gracefully turns from the dull aldermen to Canynge's friends. If we review all works that concern him in one way or another, we find that the image of Canynge is built up, not by major works, but by a multiplicity of small touches—his own poems, other short poems, parts of poems, and scores of doc­ uments that round out the imaginary world and its hero. One central trait, however, his imaginative use of riches, is the central subject of six short poems, their composition spread thoughout the Rowley year. Though all six are didactic in shaping principle, the treatment of the few simple ideas in­ volved is increasingly mimetic. In the last three, actions pre­ sented dramatically or in narrative completely embody the didactic shaping idea, though without distorting or overpow­ ering it. The first three, all appearing unostentatiously as notes to or parts of early- and middle-period Rowley works and docu­ ments, are artistically interesting only because they are all dialogues, thus setting Chatterton off on his mimetic-meansto-didatic-ends handling of such ideas, a path that is exploited with increasing artistic triumph in the last three. Chatterton himself shows signs of sensing the literary weakness of two of the first three. The earliest, "Onne oure Ladies Chirch" (before October 1768), a debate between Rowley and Truth—really an exter­ nalized inner debate—is shaped by the moral idea "from each according to his ability," thus dignifying even the poorest 'their

geach

hdine

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Chatterton's Art

man's charity. Prosodically it is perhaps the weakest Rowley poem: Chatterton notes that it is "much inferior to the gen­ erality of Rowley's compositions." "Stay curyous Traveller" (Oct.-Nov. 1768) also builds from the sight of RedclifF Church and has an almost identical moral, but the dialogue is transferred from an externalized inner debate in Rowley to an address to an imaginary traveler happening through Bristol and pausing to view the church. Though the traveler does not speak, Rowley's exhortation gives him attitudes. Rowley urges that he shame "the lazing Rychmen" of England by spreading the tale of Canynge's pious munificence. However, the magnificence of the church is, as in the first of these poems, asserted rather than evoked, except in Rowley's description of the statuary. Even these good lines—"the Seynctes and Kynges in Stonen State I That seemd with Breath and human Soule dispande [expanded]" —are part of an awkward, grandiose, irrelevant, and blasphemous quadruple comparison. As a result, the last stanza, which takes the traveler's assent completely for granted, is anticlimactic, particularly when he is instructed to "learn the Builder's Virtues and his name" (my emphasis). The name has been clearly enough given in the second stanza, and this unfortunate line conjures up a slow-witted traveler laboriously repeating the name "Canynge" before it eludes him. What went wrong with this poem is that Chatterton sacrificed most of its elements to the accomplishment of a prosodic tour de farce. Each eight-line stanza uses only two rhymes and the second half of the rhyme scheme of each is the mirror image of the first— a b abb ab a. Nearly all of the weak lines grow out of difficulties imposed by this tight scheme. These prosodic problems and the initial failure to evoke the church make the praise bombastic and the exhortation and blame officious. Since Chatterton could see the church, it is possible that it seemed a stronger poem to him, a substantial prosodic feat. "On Fitz Hardynge" (Dec. 1768-Feb. 1769) is alsoprosodically ingenious but poetically perfunctory. The dialogue here is between neglected Religion and the pre-Canynge ecclesias-

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tical builder already encountered in "Parlyamente." I suspect that the real point of this piece, which Rowley has "transplaced" into English from the Greek of our old friend John (see preceding chapter), second abbot of Fitz Hardynge's minster, is to give Bristol a twelfth-century poet who could imitate Pindar in Greek and a fifteenth-century Rowley who could translate that Greek into Rowleyan Pindaric. Chatterton was perhaps aware of the weakness of the poem: it ap­ pears in "Rowley's Heraldic Account" (see preceding chapter again) together with Abbot John's "On Richard I." How­ ever, when Chatterton uses AbbotJohn successfully as bait to catch Walpole, the poet rewrites "On Richard I," makes Abbot John "the fyrste Englyshe paynctere yn Oyles," but reduces his prowess in Greek Pindaric to "he understood the learned languages." As for Fitz Harding, Chatterton can mus­ ter, as in "Parlyamente," little enthusiasm. Perhaps he imag­ ined Canynge so vividly that he could not quite bring himself to write a strong poem in praise of a rival church builder. Three weak starts, then, on this didactic-mimetic explora­ tion of the imaginative use of riches, pieces slack in their poetry, once even comic in flaws. Yet the three poems that now grow from this mode are all individually strong, the last two of them among Chatterton's finest Rowleyan works. "The Worlde," probably contemporary with "On Fitz Hardynge," is a startling advance. It is arguable that it ought to have been included among the Rowleyan plays, since Chatterton specifically calls it an "Entyrlude" in "Lyfe of W: Canynge," where it appears as an example of Canynge's poetic abilities. It seems to me, however, more an ecologue than a play in format, and I don't think there is any evidence that Chatterton imagined its being performed. Whatever its proper category, it deals skillfully with the use-of-riches theme and carries out much more radically Chatterton's tend­ ency to turn that theme into action. The formal idea that holds it together is a multiple argument against the life de­ voted to gain cast in the form of a pageant within a dramatic situation. A father, concerned that his son put money in his purse, commands six minstrels to warn him against "Vyce,"

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which the father sees as the main obstacle to gain, though piety is also a threat: Ye Mynstrelles warne hymme how wyth redea he strais Where guiled Vyce dothe spredde her mascildeb Snare To gettynge Wealthe I woulde he shoulde be bredde And Couronnesc of rudded Goulde nee Glorie, round hys Head Accordingly the minstrels take stanzas in turn, each represent­ ing, in the brief morality pageant, a concept or force that the boy will encounter. The advice of Interest, though not going against the father's wishes, is seen to be unnecessary, for "Selfe ys fyrst yn everych cause." Love is presented unattrac­ tively, but the boy is warned that if he wishes to get wealth, he must never think of love. The advice is ambiguous but still, perhaps, compatible with the father's wishes. Pride's ad­ vice is the turning point, after which all becomes an attack on getting wealth. Pride, however, is only tenuously relevant to the central argument, and its stanza is something of a flaw in the unity of the piece. The fourth minstrel, Miserliness, gets down to cases, calling himself, like Pride, a devil, and shifting the emphasis from getting wealth to keeping it. He shows that the miser's is a joyless, gold-worshiping, fearful life. The fifth minstrel, Vice in general, has gold as his accomplice: his victim is lulled by gold until disaster strikes. Death, the sixth minstrel, is fearsome, not to the good but to the wealthy, whose affluence makes them afraid to live or die. The angry father ejects the minstrels without pay and ear­ nestly entreats, "Mie sonne, mie sonne, of this mie speeche take hede, I Nothynge ys good thatte bryngeth not to purse." "The Worlde" manages to be both effectively serious in its moral counsel and comic in the gradual discomfiture we imagine in the father. The poetry is vigorous and nicely rele­ vant to the central idea. Interest is ,a lively personification of what common sense tells us. Love notes wittily, "Inne sprytes of meltynge molde I I sette mie burneynge sele"—the metaphor may be read psychologically or medically. The a wisdom, d red

counsel

b meshed e not

c Crowns

The Rowleyan Works

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contrast between Pride's lofty aspiration and its ultimate pet­ tiness is delicately dealt with, and Miserliness fearfully imag­ ines so vividly as to create a brief drama within the pageant that lies within the larger interlude frame. In Vice's speech Chatterton has added gold to Pope's famous quatrain begin­ ning "Vice is a monster," effectively reversing the direction of Pope's thought and also subverting the father's wishes. He thought Vice had a "mascilde Snare," but we learn that it hides its ugliness "wythe goldenne veyles" before it shows its net. Death effectively completes the airtight case against a life devoted to getting. The prosody is unusually varied, as though Chatterton were trying to get as many stanza patterns into the poem as he could manage: six-, seven-, and eight-line variants of the Rowley stanza, octosyllabic couplets, trimeter quatrains, rime royal, a seven-line stanza without alexandrine, and a pentameter quatrain. Somehow the distinct point of view of each minstrel makes the prosodic variety suit the movement of thought. The poem is, indeed, effective in almost every re­ gard and as such surely adds to the author's, Canynge's, stat­ ure. Chatterton gives it to him rather than to Rowley because Canynge knew how to get gold and yet keep it peripheral or instrumental to beneficence. Also, the father's advice is pre­ cisely the advice Canynge's father had given him, as we are told in "Brief Account," "Lyfe of W: Canynge," and "Storie of Wyllyam Canynge." All in all, Chatterton's attempt to deal mimetically with the morality of riches has made a major advance with "The Worlde." The tendencies we have been considering are beautifully carried forward in two last poems. "The Gouler's Requiem (quasi Requiem) bie Canynge" (May 1769) gives Chatterton's hero once more his best poetic subject. The poem is, in effect, an expansion of the fourth minstrel's speech in "The Worlde." The subtitle suggests that there can be no final rest for the miser or usurer and that, as he testifies in the poem, there has been no rest for him while he lived. Going further back, the same unquiet, deeply felt greed turned the wheels in

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Chatterton's Art

1764 in Churchwarden Joe—in both his fable and his deathbed repentance aria. Once again Chatterton is able si­ multaneously to enter intimately into the thinking of his sub­ ject and, standing aloof, to see the comedy and irony of his life. He conveys the beloved heft of fine silver in the gouler's palm, the comic obsessiveness of his single vision, and the irony of the insecurity inherent in a life devoted above all to grasping security. The poem is a dramatic monologue representing the con­ flicting thoughts of a miser facing death: he is unable to re­ nounce his beloved wealth, and yet he sees what sort of eter­ nity its pursuit has bought for him. In the first of the two Rowleyan stanzas he bids a loving farewell to his bags, his golden marks, his silver nobles with the recurrent lament, "Ne moe: Ne moe" [No more!]. They are alive to him, the beings he loves most, but he has come to realize they are not his. He is equally terrified about their destination and his own: "Whyder must you: ah whydher moste I, goe." In the second half of the stanza, this deep anxiety about eventual destinations is finely intermingled with his own grief at the parting. In the second stanza he surveys the quality of his manner of life. At sunrise each streak of light seemed to be­ tray "A Shade of Theves"; at high noon every sound of human stirring was a threat. Waking or sleeping his mind dwelt in delusions. The stanza and poem conclude with his realization that the life shaped by his obsession has made his soul's destination frighteningly certain. I can see no way to fault the intense comic pathos of this monologue. The prosody is transparent, and the Rowleyan language is so nicely attuned to the poem's purpose as to force admiration; even "boolie Entes" are somehow dearer than "beloved Bags." The syntax has become Rowleyan, the eloquent idiom of Chatterton's special imaginative world, having a characteristic compression and ellipsis. Ne Moe the sylver Noble sheenynge bryghte, Shalle fylle mie hande wythe weighte to speke ytte fyne. . . .

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Thy Losse, or quyck a or slepe, was aie mie dreme . . . For thee, I gottenne or bie Wiles or breme b . . . . The verb is intransitive, as in "getting and spending." "I kenn not but for thee, I to the Qwood [Devil] muste goe—" The odd syntax effectively says both "I know that for nothing but thee" and "Isuspect that for thee." My point is that here and in other late Rowley poems Chatterton is coming closer and closer to an individual syntax, irregular yet open to the careful reader, such as we have come to admire in other poets who have pared and shaped the syntactic conventions of the lan­ guage to a highly individual and expressive idiom. "An Excelente Balade of Charitie," the last poem in this group, was sent with a covering letter dated 4 July 1770 to Town and Country. The editors, who speedily printed much of Chatterton's hackwork, acknowledged receipt in the August issue, about a week after Chatterton's death, thus: "The pastoral from Bristol, signed D. D. jstc], has some share of merit; but the author will, doubtless, discover upon another perusal of it, many exceptionable passages." This submission over a year after the writing of any other Rowley pieces has led to the assumption that it was written in London between 30 May 1770, when Chatterton wrote home for a second time for his Rowley glossary, and the subscribed date. This is quite possible, but I believe that it was written with the last Rowleyan works in April-May 1769 and that Chatterton sent for the glossary only to write the notes for the submitted text. The major evidence for my conclusion is the apparent lack of other Rowley activity in 1770 and the fact that the Rowleyan word proportion is very close to that of the April-May 1769 poems. The contrary evidence is the subscribed date and the fact of Chatterton's death 22 August 1770. If that death was suicide and if we take the lot of the pilgrim to be that of Chatterton in London two months or so before the suicide, the poem becomes eloquent evidence for his state of mind during the last months of his life. If, on the other hand, he died ot an a awake

b force

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Chatterton's Art

overdose of antivenereal medicine, and if his lot was moder­ ately successful in early July 1770, the poem loses both the au­ tobiographical significance that has been given it and its con­ sequent pathos as a personal document.24 Whether my own feeling in favor of an earlier date is right or wrong, it has the advantage of turning attention more exclusively on the nature of the poem itself. First of all, "Balade" is a strong culmination of Chatterton's work in the mode we have been following. "Onn oure Ladies Chirch" and "Stay curyous Traveller" urged benevo­ lence in the use of money, but rather limply. "The Worlde" and "The Gouler's Requiem" were, on the other hand, very strong negative approaches to the subject. They derive their strength of thought from attack on the concretely realized maleficent use of riches, just as Pope's poems on this subject derive much of their strength from the flurries of satiric por­ traits that foil the few positive examples. Pope's thinking on the subject is more complex than Chatterton's, but both draw effectively on the vivid lessons taught by bad examples. So far, however, Chatterton's positive advice on the issue has not done much more than to point to Redcliff Church, and so the church itself, to those who have seen it, is a more eloquent positive argument than Chatterton's poetry. In "An Excelente Balade of Charitie," however, he finally finds an eloquent positive statement in the actions and speeches of his limitor. The foregrounding of the limitor's charity against the proud and greedy affluence of the abbot gives "Balade" some of the Popean didactic strength from satire. The form of the poem is also one toward which Chatterton can be seen to be moving. In "Onn oure Ladies Chirch" the didactic point about good deeds is transferred to an imaginary dialogue between Rowley and Truth, and in "Stay curyous Traveller" Rowley addresses the same lesson, adapted for the affluent, to an imaginary traveler. The mimetic urge is there, but the teaching is not yet much transformed into action and character; instead the didacticism is transferred from the poet to a speaker in the poem. This is not necessarily a fault, of course. Unfortunately Chatterton's thought on the subject

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The Rowleyan Works

has not enough interest of its own to make for strong poetry. When he moves to the attack, however, as he had already done in his 1764 fables about greedy men, the poetry strengthens in itself and the mimetic tendency increases. In "The Worlde" there is the embodied attack on "gouling" in the father as well as in the sometimes didactic, sometimes dramatized attacks of the minstrels' speeches. "The Gouler's Requiem," building on the strength of the "Queed of Gouler's" section in "The Worlde," turns completely to a dramatic embodiment of the wrong uses of riches, and "Balade," by starting with the pilgrim's plight, is able to in­ troduce effectively and juxtapose both negative and positive examples. The method is that discussed in the first chapter on the structure of John Gay's fables—the moral point com­ pletely determines the action. To this structural approach Chatterton has adapted a treatment based on his earlier Row­ ley color and, particularly, one some of Chaucer's detail in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales. The storm, which catalyzes the entire action, and the traveler in it are anticipated in the fine stanza on Salisbury plain in "Battle of Hastings II" (11. 521-530). The shaping principle that brings these preconstructional influences to a focus is the idea of exemplifying charity and a contrasting proud selfishness in the story of the storm, the pilgrim, the abbot, and the limitor. The first two stanzas give us quintessential summer and an approaching storm. In the third and fourth stanzas the quintessential victim, moribund, poverty-stricken, is set under the threatening sky. He is not to expect either the charity or the love of the great. The situation thus set, the storm bursts; the description is too fine not to be quoted. The gatherd storme is rype; the bigge drops falle; The forswat 3 meadowes smethe, b and drenche 0 the raine; The coming ghastness d do the cattle pall, 6 And the full flockes are drivynge ore the plaine; "sunburnt

b Smoke

d terror

e fright

c drink

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Chatterton's Art

Dashde from the cloudes the waters Aott f again; The welkin opes; the yellow Ievynne g flies; And the hot fierie Smothe h in the wide Iowings 1 dies Liste! now the thunder's rattling Clymmyngei sound Chevesk slowlie on, and then embollen1 clangs, Shakes the hie spyre, and losst, dispended, drown'd, Still on the gallard™ eare of terroure hanges; The windes are up; the lofty elmen" swanges; Again the levynne and the thunder poures, And the full cloudes are braste 0 attenes p in Stonenq showers. Jeremiah Milles noted as early as 1782 that this was "a descrip­ tion not to be excelled in either ancient or modern poetry." 25 Certainly, Chatterton's only eighteenth-century competition here would be the summer storm in Thomson's The Seasons. More to the point, the storm, attacking, retreating, then at­ tacking again, brings the pilgrim to the eye of the abbot, then of the limitor. The next two stanzas are given to the elegantly dressed ab­ bot, bedraggled and cursing at the storm. Chatterton details his finery scornfully, even to the trappings of his rosebedecked palfrey: "Full well it shewn he thoughten coste no sinne." The pilgrim's plea is full and direct, the abbot's reply proud and curt, concluding "None touch mie rynge who not in honour live." He rides off under a cleared sky; then the storm attacks again and brings the limitor running under the pilgrim's holm tree for shelter. Again clothing is the telling sign of moral character. A single beseeching exclamation opens the limitor's light purse and takes the cloak from his back. The poet cannot refrain from a powerful summary of the total problem in the final couplet. "Virgynne and hallie [holy] Seyncte, who sitte yn gloure [glory], I Or give the mittee 'fly

8 Iightning

h Steam,

'flames 1 Swelled "burst

'noisy m frighted "at once

k moves

"elm "stony

vapors

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The Rowleyan Works

[mighty, rich] will, or give the gode man power." Earlier in the poem he has also intruded, and both times there is the dis­ tinct impression that he cannot prevent the direct expression of his feeling about the situation. Look in his glommcd" face, his sprighte there scanne; Howe woe-be-gone, how withered, forwynd,b deade! Haste to thie church-glebe-house,c asshrewedd manne! Haste to thie kiste,e thie onlie dortouref bedde. Cale,g as the claie which will greh on thie hedde, Is Charitie and Love aminge highe elves;1 Knightis and Barons live for pleasure and themselves. In earnestly addressing first us, then the pilgrim, Chatterton pulls himself, the pilgrim, and the reader somehow into one company within the poem, as though to join forces against the selfish coldness of "high elves." The basic story was, of course, previously used in the para­ ble of the good Samaritan and at a low point in Joseph An­ drews' fortunes. Chatterton certainly knew both stories and either or both may have hinted at the idea. However, the treatment and therefore the particular power of this poem are strictly of Chatterton's making. It is a minor masterpiece. With it the series of poems on the use of riches has returned, but with extraordinary power, to the simple almsgiving counseled in "Onn oure Ladies Chirch." It is ironic that Chatterton was unable to find as strong a literary expression for the grand beneficence of his hero Canynge. THE LAST OF THE TRADITIONAL HERO In April and May 1769, the last months of the Rowley year, Chatterton's traditional hero dies a complex and puzzling death. There are vigorous, promising forays into new sub"clouded, dejected

b dry,

d accursed

e Coffin

f sleeping-room

8 cold

h grow

'creatures, folk

sapless

C churchyard

grave

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Chatterton's Art

jects and modes. There is an imaginative extrapolation back­ ward to pre-Rowleyan narrative style and prosody. There is, on the other hand, perfunctory dealing with familiar subjects and modes and, even, travesty of traditional heroic modes. Afterward the heroic makes itself felt in Chatterton's modern writings as the coloring in mock-heroic or burlesque poetry, in the contrastingly exotic transformations of the African Ec­ logues and the Ossianic pieces, or in its reverse—satiric at­ tacks on the rich and powerful. The new direction taken in "Englysh Metamorphosis" (May 1769) may have been planned as a fairly elaborate proj­ ect, since to the title of the completed poem—"Booke 1st"—Chatterton has appended a note: "I will endeavour to get the remainder of these poems." Had he completed such a project at the level of this first poem, we would have a strong Rowleyan Anglicization of Ovid. The subject of the poem is double—Geoffrey of Monmouth's legendary British history concerning Brutus and Locrine (taken by Chatterton from the redactions of Spenser, Drayton, Stowe, and Holinshed—see Works, II, 966-967) and Bristol topography. From the legend­ ary material Chatterton inherited two metamorphoses, those of King Humber to the Humber and of Sabrina to the Severn. He adds the Bristol Avon to the Sabrina story, metamorph­ oses Sabrina's mother Elstrid to Bristol's St. Vincent's Rocks, and transforms the giant who kills them into Snowdon. These extrapolations from the legendary material to Bristol topography are so smoothly handled that one is surprised Chatterton did not take the next step, transforming Brutus himself to Bristol, for in Turgot and Rowley's "Discorse on Brystowe" we learn that "Josephus de Ascown saieth Brystowe is come from Bruytstowe or the place of Bruyt." The shaping principle of the poem is to construct a tradi­ tional legendary action, human in its interest, which can be convincingly tied to the local scene—in this case the Avon gorge, the most striking feature of Bristol topography. The effect of this sort of extrapolation from legendary materials is to make one feel that one's own place had intimate connec-

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tions with ancient legendry and its rich subsequent develop­ ment in literature. Thus, as Chatterton builds from and re­ shapes the traditional material, his scope gradually narrows from the conquest of the island by Brutus to a focus on Bris­ tol. The narrative method, on the other hand, moves from (1) a closely rendered account ofBrutus's landing, through (2) a summarizing narrative of his rule, the Locrine-GendolyneElstrid affair, and Elstrid's disguised flight with Sabrina, back to (3) a close rendering, again, of Elstrid's and Sabrina's deaths, their local metamorphoses, and that of the giant who pursued and killed them. These contrasting narrative sections fall into three, five, and three Rowleyan stanzas, respectively, so the story has a rather symmetrical shape and feeling. The first three stanzas are far superior to any of Chatterton's sources and must stand among his best poetry. The Tro­ jan landing is seen from the point of view of the astonished, terrified Scythians, on whom the Trojans have descended like creatures from another world. It is the often described scene of noble savages (first stanza) and their first bewildered as­ tonishment at the warlike trappings, the organization, and the magical technology of civilization. Since we understand what the Scythians do not, we tend to identify ourselves in such scenes with the coming of civilization and all of its ambiguous implications. As a result, Chatterton's device of rendering the events from the savages' point of view gives us a double view of the scene and heightens its intensity. Theie stonde, theie ronne, theie Ioke wyth eger eynea; The shyppes sayIe, boleyngeb wythe the kyndelie ayre, Ronneth to harbour from the beateynge bryne; Theie dryve awaie aghaste, whanne to the stronde A burled0 Trojan lepes, wythe Morglaien sweerded yn honde Hymme followede eftsoones hys compheeres,e whose swerdes "eyes "fatal sword

"swelling eCompanions

'armed

\62

Chatterton's Art

Glestred Iyke gledeynge f starres ynne frostie nete, g Hayleynge theyre capytayne in chirckynge words 11 Kynge of the lande, whereon theie set theyre fete. The summarizing five stanzas that follow are lively enough, though they lapse, probably intentionally, in poetic vigor, since their function is to get us smoothly from the land­ ing to the metamorphoses of the last three stanzas. Again there is the fine evocation of sights and sounds that we have come to expect in Chatterton's best poetry. "To meddle ayre he lette the mountayne flie. I The flying wolfynnes sente a yelleynge crie. ..." Not often does the grandiose style Chatterton developed in the Hastings poems fmd a grand enough subject, but this poem is an instance. Chatterton also has found here a subject that will bring out the possibilities in the Rowleyan stanza for a measured stateliness. There is no clash in "Englysh Metamorphosis" between medium and subject, and one regrets that the poet did not sooner attempt these legendary materials. I believe that the influence of Camden's Britannia was too strong to allow much indulgence in this di­ rection. In most of the Rowleyan writings, Chatterton is more concerned to imagine a history of Bristol that could stand up to Camden's sort of skepticism about legendary materials. As for the two somewhat halfhearted late plays, one can understand Chatterton's interest in their subjects. Yet since neither play gets off the ground artistically, it is difficult to explain why he attempted them. "The Tournament: An Inter­ lude" (May 1769) seems to carry through to completion the sort of plot Chatterton had in mind for the very early heroic fragment "The Unknown Knyght or the Tournament." The hero Burton waits impatiently for tourneying competitors, fells two and in downing a third gets credit for a fourth. A strange knight appears and overthrows five. Burton vows that he will build a church wherever he downs the strange 'livid

g night

h C:

"a confused noise'

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knight, conquers him, and the herald declares Burton "Kynge of Tourney Tylte." The action is wooden and no characters but Burton and the officious herald even begin to emerge. The opening and closing speeches by the herald and the stanzas expressing Burton's impatience and declaring his vow are sound enough journeyman work, and the minstrels' songs are superior poetry, but they do not combine to make or even save the total poem. The felling of the five knights by the stranger in a stage direction (at 1. 130) suggests that Chatterton was anxious to get to the end of the piece. It is even conceivable that the perfunctory interlude was written to foil the two minstrels' songs, which are superior performances in rather new heroic modes. The first, immedi­ ately before the tourneying, is a lively account of a lion hunt by William the Conqueror in the course of which he kills not only the lion but a wolf and a stag. We follow the progress of the hunt in orderly stages in the first four lines of each stanza, and these stages are punctuated by variations (in the final couplet of all but the third stanza) on this theme: "Goe; rouze the Lyonne from his hylted [hidden] denne, I Lette thie floes [arrows] drenche [drink] the blodde of anie thynge botte menn—" The effect is to suggest total involvement in the manly dangers and delights of hunting as an alternative to the hunger for war. Thus the song both glorifies William, whose addiction to hunting was traditional, and recognizes that too often his game was man. The connection with the interlude would seem to be the suggestion that tourneying too is mor­ ally ambiguous but valuable, another sublimation of the in­ stinct toward war. Yet if this is the point, would not a similar song on tourneying itself do better? The second minstrels' song, closing the tourney and the play, continues the tendency toward allegorical odes embody­ ing ideas in some sort of action (cf. "On Fitz Hardynge"). Here, however, there are no human participants: Battle and Pleasure are the actors. When Battle returns from the slaugh­ ter, seeking Pleasure in the dark wood of ease and rest, Pleas­ ure dances to greet him and turns his spirit from war to sexual

Chatterton's Art

delight. A moral follows: if you love Pleasure, seek Honor first. The explicit connection made between warfare and sex­ ual gratification is both searching and puzzling, especially in its possible connections with tourneying and with the first song, whose counsel was very different, though not entirely contradictory. Tourneying is perhaps, like hunting, mock war—a symbolic proof of masculinity, and Honor (and hence Pleasure) may be got by tourneying. The problem is that Bat­ tle in this song is "smetheynge [smoking, steaming] wythe nue quickened Gore, I Bendynge wythe Spoyles and bloddie droppynge Heads"—we are not dealing with tourneying. A possible answer is that the action and the two songs deal with three symbolic expressions of masculinity—hunting, tourneying, and war—and that the first and the last of these, like the placing of the songs, bracket tourneying. Tourneying is, like hunting, war without human death, but it is also, like war, performed against "bredren," not "wylde beastes." Bat­ tle is here dramatized as the way to sexual pleasure, but in his speech just before the last song the herald proclaims of Bur­ ton's tourneying, "Dames fayre and gentle, for your Loves he foughte; I For you the longe Tylte Launce the Swerde he shente [broke] / Hejousted allein [only], haveynge you yn thoughte." The songs are puzzling then, but whatever their relation­ ship to the action proper, they tend to give it vague moral dimensions. Also, they are certainly superior poetry and superior poems in that their separate structures are unified, complete, and effective as compared to the dispersed and per­ functory character of the total interlude. The prosody in both—the a b a b c c five-beat stanza with alexandrine in the first (a shortening of the full Rowley stanza used in the action proper) and the alternating five- and three-beat a b a b quat­ rains of the second—effectively brings out the progress of the hunt, with its regular punctuation of moral anxiety in the first and the relationship between war and sex in the second. One extra-artistic task is clearly accomplished, at any rate, in "The Tournament." The occasion for building the second

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church on the St. Mary Redcliff site, given earlier in the prose account "Byrtonne," is here presented in detail and with changed particulars. Aside from this, however, Chatterton's energy seems given to the minstrels' songs, which constitute one-third of the whole. One also senses a minor interest in the color and ceremony of tilting, here drawn from The Faerie Queetie, but that interest is not sufficiently focused to help the ineffective poem much. Chatterton wrote so little of "Goddwyn: A Tragedie" (May 1769)—only three complete scenes—that we can only guess at his intentions. The first scene shows Goddwyn guid­ ing Harold's violent anger at Edward the Confessor and his fawning Norman courtiers toward a plan of action that cduld free England of the Norman parasites. In the second, Edward quarrels with his queen (Harold's sister) about the Normans, and in the third we see Edward being manipulated by his Norman bursar into levying further taxes on the im­ poverished English. The direction of all this is clear enough, and the prologue suggests that Goddwyn has been robbed of the good name he deserved because he was not a benefactor of the Church. The vigorous fragment of a Chorus too, which fits no part of the extant play, suggests a plot that would have presented Godwin as the heroic leader of an anti-Norman struggle to save the country by assigning Edward's power to a regent while keeping him as titular king. In view of the title, it seems probable that the play would have ended with God­ win's death rather than with Harold's defeat at Hastings. As far as three scenes get, the situation is quickly and inter­ estingly developed and the characters are effectively intro­ duced and discriminated. It promises to be a political play rather than the sort of personal tragedy that we have in Ailla. It seems very possible that a Patriot parallel to 1769 English politics is intended: Edward as George III, Hugh as Bute (first lord of the Treasury 1762-1763), Godwin and Harold as Pa­ triot leaders, Normans in Edward's court as Scots in high office, and so on. Patriot petitions and remonstrances seem to

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have their close parallels in the text—see especially lines 29-33 and 56-59. The Chorus, furthermore, is more appropriate to the Patriot politics of 1769 than to anything in "Goddwyn" as we have it. The major logical difficulty with a political read­ ing of the fragment is that it would make "Goddwyn" politi­ cal several months before Chatterton's modern works became unambiguously political. The Chorus is a puzzle in itself. One is not at all sure what Chatterton intended with it. Was it to be one of several in a tragedy a la Grecque? It does not appear to belong at the end of the third scene, since it suggests actions that have not yet occurred in the play. It too is a fragment, though fairly clear in its direction, if not in its connection with the play. Like the second minstrels' song in "The Tournament" its action is completely one of personifications: Freedom defeats the fear­ some attack of Power, and is about to face War when the fragment breaks off. The poem is thick with supporting per­ sonifications and their symbolic trappings and attire. The ac­ tions and the diction are drawn from Chatterton's heroic bat­ tle mode. The prosody is that of a fairly controlled Cowleyan Pindaricjust beginning to break its way out of the regular al­ ternation of the last song in "The Tournament," and this ef­ fect does give it musical vigor and prosodic suspense. The situation is not so closed and demonstrable as that of Battle and Pleasure; we are clearly supposed to feel anxiety about the threats to Freedom. The shaping principle, then, would seem to be to dramatize political freedom and the forces that threaten it through a personified action of warfare among ideas, feelings, and external pressures on them. Whatever Chatterton's intent, he abandoned both the Chorus and the play, and it must be recognized that as far as "Goddwyn" goes it has neither the dramatic power nor the poetic strength ο{/Ella.

The last two works to be treated here were written by 14 April 1769 (see Works, II, 977), but I conclude my discussion of the heroic search with them because of their peculiar impli-

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cations. "The Romaunte of the Cnyghte" is inserted in the second half of "Account of the De Berghams," the elaborate heraldic pedigree Chatterton manufactured for his Bristol pa­ tron Henry Burgum. It is there dated 1320 and attributed to Burgum's supposed ancestor John de Bergham, monk, Mas­ ter of Arts from Oxford, and "one of the Greatest Ornaments of the age . . . he wrote sevl. Books and translated some Part of the Iliad under the Title of the Romance of Troy." Every­ thing about "The Romaunte" argues that it is simultaneously serving two purposes. It is a moderately interesting version of the rape-rescue scene in Ailla, a scene we shall encounter again in comic versions in "The Revenge" and in "Memoirs of a Sad Dog." It is also a final attempt to extrapolate backward to a pre-Rowleyan style and prosody. In short, Chatterton here imagines the forest scene with Celmonde, Birtha, and Hurra written in the narrative style and the prosody of 112 years ear­ lier. Instead of regular stanzas, we have rhyme groups of four, five, or eight lines, each of them corresponding to a break in the sense and only one four-line rhyme scheme (aba b) used more than once. The rhythm is extremely uncertain. There is a predominant four-beat line, but there seem to be many threes and fives, and often the four-beat lines can be read as threes if an anapest is forced in. Often both iambic and anapestic readings require forcing. The rhymes too are fre­ quently forced. For me, the clear intention is to illustrate a prosody much cruder than Rowley's. The same can be said of the style: the setting, characters, and diction are handled with stark primitivism. The syntax too is thick and frequently ambiguous. For all of this intentional crudeness, "The Romaunte" comes through as a strong poem, simple in the outline of its action, interestingly thick and difficult in tex­ ture. It is as though Chatterton were anticipating the preRaphaelites. In the structure of the action everything is separate and dis­ tinct; nothing flows from section to section. The setting is given (four lines), the knight sets out in search of valorous deed (five), the knight sees the threatened damsel and ques-

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tions her assailant (eight), the assailant refuses to answer and is challenged (four), they fight furiously and the assailant dies (four), the knight and the damsel make appropriate conclud­ ing remarks (four). The fight section gives a clear idea of the style: Alychea Boars enchafedb to fyghte heiec flies The Discoorteous Knyghte bee Strynged botte stringer the righte The dynne bee herde a'myIe for fuire6 a' the fyghte Tyl thee false Knyghte yfallethe and dyes "The Romance of the Knight," Chatterton's moderniza­ tion of "The Romaunte," appears in the footnotes to the De Bergham account.26 One can see Chatterton's intentions change as it proceeds. The first eight lines are a serious modernization-expansion of the first four lines of "The Romaunte," the poetry ranging from conventional compe­ tence to excellence: "The yellow Flag uprears its spotted head I Hanging regardant o'er its watry Bed—" Yet these eight lines got Chatterton started amplifying de Bergham's poem and apparently the action began to seem to him foolishly stilted, the pre-Rowleyan crudity essentially comic, and so for Syr Knyghte dyd ymounte oponn a Stede Ne Rounciea ne Drybbletteb of make Thanne astertec for dursied dede Wythe Morglaiee hys Foemenne to make blede Eke swythyn® as Wynde Trees, theyre Hartys to shake we have this comic amplification: The worthy Knight ascends his foaming Stede Of size uncommon and no common Breed "heated

c they

"like "strong

ef

"cart-horse "hardy, valorous

"small

c went

ea

f as

ury

fatal sword

forth quickly

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His Sword of giant make hangs from his Belt Whose piercing Edge, his daring Foes had felt To seek for Glory and Renown he goes To scatter Death among his trembling Foes Unnerv'd by fear they trembled at his Stroke So cutting Blasts shake the tall mountain Oak. . . . He returns for four lines to serious description, but from line 21 on he seldom resists the temptation to parody, travesty, burlesque, or undercut the heroic conventions, turning them into limp cliches. One could hardly ask for a neater example of the complete change of effect a difference in treatment can work in identical actions. The attitude implied in this parody foreshadows the end of the Rowleyan enterprise. In subsequent sections we shall con­ sider those Rowleyan works that fall in lines of modal devel­ opment continued in Chatterton's post-Rowleyan writings. In this chapter, however, as we have followed old and new heroes from "Bristowe Tragedie" on, we have witnessed the birth, growth, and death of the major literary thrust of the Rowley idea. Whatever the discouragements Chatterton met, it is quite conceivable that at this point, writing an imaginary pre-Rowleyan romance in the midst of a faked heraldic pedi­ gree for Burgum, he saw a certain sad comedy in his elaborate enterprise of creating an imaginary past.

Satiric Worlds and Modes: 1769-1770 If "An Excelente Balade of Charitie" was written, as I sus­ pect, about May 1769, 1 Chatterton invented the complex Rowley world—its history, documents, drawings, and poetry—and abandoned it in something less than a year, never thereafter looking back except to write the glossary (June 1770) to the "Balade." For three months after turning his back on his fifteenth-century heroes, from June through August 1769, he wrote little and that little had no clear direc­ tion. There are expressive elegies on Holland and Smith, two mock elegies on local poets, angry yet dignified reproofs of Walpole in prose and verse, the very conventional prospect poem "Clifton," the lengthy Ossianic "Godred Crovan," and "Amphitryon"—a fluent but abandoned fragment of slangy musical burlesque. Each of these probings in new directions eventually proves to be fruitful, but during the summer of 1769 no clear new direction has been established, nothing that can draw him into those nightlong poetry binges that seem to have characterized both the Rowley year and his last year's involvement with a satiric world of villains. On a first survey, the hundred-odd works of the last year of his life (September 1769 to August 1770) give the impression that randomness continued, even though the volume of writ­ ing once more swells. Yet if we set aside those pieces clearly done as hackwork for Bristol and London markets, two clear lines of development emerge that can be seen, however new they at first appear, to have their roots in earlier work. The hackwork aside, almost everything Chatterton wrote in his last year is either satirical or celebratory. It is with the history of these two groups of work that these last two chapters will

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deal. The celebratory works (the epithet will require explana­ tion) are the descriptive lyrics, the Ossianics, and the pas­ torals. They are reserved for the last chapter because, though they begin with Rowley, they also sound Chatterton's final note and indicate most clearly that he continued to develop as an artist to the time of his death. The satiric modes traced in this fourth chapter, on the other hand, come to a halt by early summer 1770. They fall into three main groups—verse sat­ ires, satiric love poetry and prose, and satiric prose fictions. Before taking up these satiric groups it will be well to con­ sider the literary influences that seem to have catalyzed these works. Though RedclifF Church, Bristol topography, and England's past give place to very different subjects and ideas, certain poets continue to stimulate and other new influences nudge him in new directions. SATIRIC STANCES AND MODELS What most seems to have focused Chatterton's powers after the indecisive summer of 1769 is his assumption of an aggres­ sive stance as a freethinking libertine, a stance related, as we shall shortly see, to the hero-seeking ofhis Rowleyan writings. The first unmistakable statement of the position occurs in an odd verse epistle to his friend John Baker titled "Journal 6th," written apparently through most of the month of September. Once this position is taken, Chatterton finds it a continuing stimulus, and starting in January 1770 the notions and man­ nerisms of radical Patriot politics prove a congenial addition to libertinism. It is not clear just when Chatterton's religious and moral views parted company with the Anglican orthodoxy in which he seems to have been unemphatically raised. It is not certain, in fact, that he was ever more than nominally orthodox. I find no evidence of strong religious feeling of any sort between the 1764 hymns and these freethinking poems of the latter part of 1769. Meyerstein (Life, chap. 14), George R. Potter, and Georges Lamoine 2 have canvassed the evidence, but they do

η2

Chatterton's Art

not affix precise dates to the stages of his religious develop­ ment. I have suggested that a quarrel with the Reverend Mr. Alexander Catcott may have been a factor in his break from whatever orthodoxy he felt. 3 Meyerstein conjectured that much of his freethinking weaponry against Catcott came from the distiller Michael Clayfield; this is likely, but "Jour­ nal 6th" was completed a month before Chatterton sought Clayfield's acquaintance. Whatever the influences and precise dates, the libertine, freethinking Chatterton does emerge dis­ tinctly in autumn 1769. From then on, traces of the new posi­ tion are in most of his work, and straightforward credos— some detached, some aggressive or defensive declarations of faith in the midst of longer arguments—begin to appear. The first of these, "Impromptu on the Immortality of the Soul," does not argue from theology or scripture but from the universality of the idea of immortality, so it pretty clearly postdates any adherence, however nominal, to Athanasius and scripture. It must, on the other hand, come before au­ tumn 1769, since it concludes on sin and the need for God's forgiveness. The poet wrestles with anxious, unorthodox un­ certainty based on probabilities, and comes finally to rest in a fervid hope that, since immortality is likely, sins are to be for­ given by a merciful God. By mid-December, in the "Epistle to Catcott," he is clearly distinguishing his own position from both "superstition" and pantheism and stating that position aggressively: I own the awful Truth that God made all And by his Fiat Worlds and Systems fall But Study Nature not an Atom there Will unassisted by her Power appear The Fiat without Agents is at best For Priestcraft or for Ignorance a Vest The dig at orthodoxy is as unmistakable in a passage from the concluding lines of "The Defence," written in the same month.

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I own a God immortal boundless wise Who bid our Glorys of Creation rise Who form'd his varied Likeness in Mankind Centring his many Wonders in the Mind Who saw Religion a fantastic Night But gave us Reason to obtain the Light "The Articles of the Belief of Me Thomas Chatterton" can be seen in photographic reproduction in Life, p. 316. Meyerstein ingeniously argues—from its being on parchment and folded with a part cut away so that the title (verso) immedi­ ately appears—that the poet carried it about with him as a badge of religious defiance. That God being incomprehensible: it is not required of us, to know the mysterys of the Trinity &c. &c. &c. &c. That it matters not whether a Man is a Pagan TurkJew or Christian if he acts according to the Religion he professes That if a man leads a good moral Life he is a Christian That the Stage is the best School of Morality and The Church of Rome (some Tricks of Priestcraft excepted) is certainly the true Church. This signed document is surely more a calculated affront to any Anglican or dissenting orthodoxy than a reminder to himself, and the last article is quixotically and provocatively contradictory. Chatterton brought this parchment to George Catcott in 1769—perhaps assuming that it would be shown to Alexander. He is clearly trying to get an Anglican's goat, and we see that freethinking is for him not just a liberating stance but also a weapon. The thrust of "The Copernican System," written two days before Christmas 1769 (the date of "The Defence"), is that the beautiful regularity of the solar system tells us more of God than does scripture or theology: "These are thy wondrous works, first source of Good! I Now more admir'd in being

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understood." That is the conclusion: the didactic march of the couplets that precede it reflects that order. Mathematical and astronomical spheres within spheres are being asserted as in implicit refutation of "Revelation Sphere-enveloped Dame," whom we shall encounter in "Happiness." The whole poem is an ingenious, measured, unimpassioned suggestion of the more rational piety appropriate to rational faith. Two blank verse challenges to orthodoxy were written in Chatterton's copy of Catcott's Treatise on the Deluge, proba­ bly in January 1770. Both are constructed as logical argu­ ments and both carry strong, unresolved overtones of anger at omnipotence as conceived by orthodoxy. "Sentiment" ar­ gues that however one dies—whether by violent death (mur­ der or suicide), wasting disease, or sudden stroke—all deaths "Curtail the Miserys of human Life": "All to one common Dissolution tends." "If Wishing for the MysticJoys ofLove" challenges God more directly on the subject of sexual appe­ tite: He gave us these "Passions which we must obey," "And for such forc'd iniquity we're damnd." Since this copy of the Treatise also contains the "Epistle to Catcott," "The Method­ ist," "Heccar and Gaira," and "The Defence"—all bearing on Alexander Catcott's various orthodoxies—it seems likely that Chatterton's new position is, like the Rowley fantasy, also a part of his search for a father. That Rowley world em­ bodied an imagined ideal relationship between a beneficent patron and a gifted artist; this freethinking world lays claim to intellectual parentage by acts of filial rebellion, declarations of independence. Some such stage is almost predictable in our Western rites of passage. There is a logic to the modes Chatterton works in his liter­ ary exploration of freethinking. In the verse satires, both epistles and topical satires are well suited to the redefinition of relationships that follow a decision to move outside the reli­ gious and moral community and to the satiric outsider not­ ing, one by one, vulnerable aspects of the society of attitudes he once inhabited. Musical burlesque can simultaneously

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satirize that society's orthodox heroes and the lofty musical and literary conventions that have buttressed their status and authority. The traditional hothouse of amatory verse, opened to freethinking winds, produces interesting new hybrids from the tired stock of amatory convention. Also, prose fiction of­ fers a medium for more down-to-earth satiric notation. As to politics, until 4 January 1770 there is scant evidence that Chatterton considered it anything but a symptom of folly. Also, there is evidence that by the end of May he was returning to that view, though with distinct preferences for one brand of folly over another. In the York-Lancastrian dis­ pute Canynge was reluctantly and only gradually a Yorkist, Rowley was sometimes one, sometimes the other, almost as though Chatterton had forgotten which side he had taken in earlier writings (see Works, II, 1115). Perhaps the definitive Rowleyan statement on politics is Canynge's epigram "Onn Johne a Dalbenie": "Johne makes a Jarre 'boute Lancaster and yorke I Bee stille gode manne, and learne to mynde thie worke." Chatterton seems to have had much this view through most of his writing life. The first hint of possible Pa­ triot (i.e., pro-Wilkes, anti-Bute, antiministerial) leanings is in May 1769 in "Goddwyn," which can, as we have seen, be read as Patriot allegory. "Hobbinol and Thyrsis" and "Elegy on the Demise of a Great Genius," both apparently of August 1769, find political partisanship a good subject for comedy, and "Conversation" (27 October 1769) has two mildly Pa­ triot couplets (11. 43-46). On 4 January, however, Chatterton produced the lengthy Patriot burlesque "Consuliad," haphazardly rewritten from the nonpolitical Bristolian "Constabiliad." The changes made to adapt Bristol vestrymen to intriguing London politicians are so slight as to incline one to take the piece as opportunism rather than settled political conviction. The poem is followed, however, from mid-February through mid-May, by a con­ centration on Patriot satire done with apparent fervor; after mid-May only a few Patriot writings appear, and there is evi­ dence to think that politics on either side has once more re-

Chatterton's Art sumed a trivial place in his view of things. In the letter to his sister of 30 May he talks of schemes for writing on the government side. His partially autobiographical hero in "Memoirs of a Sad Dog" (July 1770) ridicules Patriot pub­ lishers, but says, the late prosecutions against the booksellers having frightened them all out of their patriotism, I am necessi­ tated either to write for the entertainment of the public, or in defence of the ministry. As I have some little re­ mains of conscience, the latter is not very agreeable. Political writing, of either side of the question, is of little service to the entertainment or instruction of the reader. Abuse and scurrility are generally the chief figures of the language of party. I am not of the opinion of those au­ thors, who deem every man in place a rascal, and every man out of place a patriot. This may be a sop to the Town and Country editors, since it was mildly Patriot, but Chatterton's sympathies do seem to have stayed, though less emphatically, on the left until his death, though he returns to a rather cool view of those for whom even Patriot politics were all in all. The Sad Dog's "little remains of conscience" were not, at any rate, Chatterton's, for he did write proministerial pa­ pers—at least two and perhaps three—in May (see Works, II, 774-776). The pieces are lost, except for a few phrases, but their drift is clear. Unless one agrees with his sometime view that politics is at best an exploitable folly, one must recognize a bit of Apostate Will in Chatterton during May, and indeed in his "Will" he had already boasted of like role-playing in religion. We are left, then, with the question of the sincerity of his feelings during the three months of tireless Patriot writ­ ing. We must keep in mind two factors of opposite tendency. Though "a great Genius can affect every thing," his model Charles Churchill would almost inevitably lead him through freethinking and libertinism toward the Patriot position. A

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further point, again a matter of interpretation, bears on the question. I have argued that the freethinking, libertine work—especially insofar as it was aimed at Alexander Catcott—gives the reverse of the Canynge-Rowley ideal, as though Chatterton, refused the role of elder son, becomes the prodigal son, finding his identity in rebellion. If this view can be given some weight, then the defiance of political authority in the Patriot satires and, particularly and repeatedly, the gross sexual taunting of the Earl of Bute and the Princess Dowager of Wales are a further development of this reverse of the Oedipal coin. In Chatterton's Patriot mythology Bute and the Princess not only secretly rule country and king; they are illicit lovers and railing at their lust often appears at high points of satiric feeling. The Patriots Beckford and Wilkes, on the other hand, appear as beneficent paternal figures, and Chatterton seems to have sought their patronage (see Works, I, 560, 577-578). The quality of the political writings has been underesti­ mated—I believe because they have been usually thought of as anti-Rowleyan. Rowley was congenial to nineteenth-century tastes that, except for Wordsworth's and Rossetti's, failed to see the vigor and wit in the best of the political writing. The verse satires have more dash, more structural cogency, and, when thoughtfully read, more power than they have been al­ lowed. The prose letters in the style ofjunius seem to me, on the other hand, almost devoid of literary interest. As stylistic imitations they are precocious, but they are tediously predict­ able, repetitious, and pretentious, and I shall give them short shrift. As with the modes, there is a logic to the models chosen in this satiric phase. In 1769-1770 a young satirist's models had to be Pope and Churchill. We have seen in the last two chap­ ters the strength of Pope's underground influence on the way Chatterton conceived Rowley's artistic position among his less-polished predecessors and contemporaries. In a few Row­ ley an epistles and in much of this new freethinking, libertine, and Patriot satire Pope's technical example becomes germane.

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Pope, a very different sort of outsider than Chatterton, never­ theless invents and improves satiric techniques that prove amenable to Chatterton's aims. Churchill, on the other hand, becomes more and more Chatterton's satiric model for both technique and targets. Pope's major gift to English satire was the open verse epis­ tle. He learned the mode from Horace and his continental and English commentators and imitators,4 but no one before him so fully exploited it. Pope's satiric epistles are paradigms for the strategic marshaling of anger. He defines and deploys his antagonist (whether recipient or target), the observing larger audience, and his own satiric stance and moves so as to bring off a public battle that he cannot lose. He is master of the fullscale, unanswerable public insult. The scale of his attacks al­ lows him to manipulate tone, satiric force, and directionindirection to achieve crescendos of aggression. Whether he concludes with cresting scorn, as in his epistle "To Augus­ tus," or with a subsiding from public triumph into private compliment, as in the "Epistle to Arbuthnot" and the Moral Essays, Pope devises techniques to orchestrate the tempo of combat for maximum devastation. Here Chatterton is the disciple who "on weak wings, from far, pursues" Pope's flights. His more modest excursions are, from the Rowleyan epistles on, best understood by watching him work with the available variables in epistles, time the surges of his attacks, and organize dynamic and sequential elements within overall shaping principles. The satiric epistle is not a particular form but rather a com­ plex of formal possibilities arising from the fact that letters have both writers and recipients. The functional variables are four. (1) The writer may be either the actual author or an invented character (Fullford's letter—see chapter one—is Chatterton's only epistle of the latter sort). (2) The intended recipient may be the person addressed or, as in most literary epistles, some larger reading public. (3) The person actually or ostensibly addressed may be either friend (familiar epistle) or target (usually a more formal epistle). (4) The attack on a

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chosen target may be either direct or indirect. The variants and their deployment are governed by the intended impact of each work, a pattern of thought and feeling (1) imitated for its implicit interest as expression of the writer's character, though with constant satiric overtones, or (2) arranged in order to prove, teach, persuade, attack, and so on, quite di­ rectly. In other words, though the format imitates letters, the ultimate organizing principle may be mimetic or didactic. The major artistic decisions concern formality or familiarity, directness or indirectness. The secondary, contextual ele­ ments are the pretended audience and the actual audience. The pretended audience may be vaguely and intermittently used, as in Pope's early essay-epistles, or it may dominate the sup­ posed writer's view of his subject, as the idea of George II dominates "To Augustus." The actual audience are almost invariably enticed, if the author is skillful and they are curious and intelligent, into an active role in the literary transaction. It is as though the reader had found a letter in the street, had, impelled by curiosity, read it, and consequently imagined writer, recipient, and their relationship. All seven of Chatterton's verse epistles are familiar rather than formal. It is pertinent to note that as Pope's sense that he spoke for a unified English community declined, he turned increasingly from those modes that assume such a commu­ nity—pastoral, landscape poem, epic, for example—toward this familiar Horatian mode that, assuming only a commu­ nity of two, yet begs to be overheard by the larger commu­ nity. "An Essay on Criticism" and Essay on Man, both of which make strong though limited use of the ostensible recip­ ient convention, speak for a minority within the community. Pope said of the former, for example, that "not one gentle­ man in three score even of a liberal education" could under­ stand it, 5 but this is a recognition of an hierarchy of wit and learning within the community, not a denial of community, though in Essay on Man Pope and Bolingbroke stand above it in order to comprehend it. As Pope grows older, however, he gradually comes to feel that his circle is a dissenting minority

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antagonistic to the values of even educated public opinion. The literate public is, therefore, to be seduced into sharing (or forced into taking account of) his views. We and probably many of Pope's contemporaries feel that we are being asked to join a select club whose purpose is the betterment of the shapeless, mindless total society that cannot recognize its own good, a club very much like the Rowley-Canynge circle. What had happened to Pope was also, of course, happening to the nation. A community of politics, religion, and values had been shattered by the upheavals in every area of seventeenth-century life. The select community of wise, urbane peers that the familiar epistle suggests makes it a particularly enticing mode in times of unshared, fragmented values, or loss of community. It is a declaration of independence from a bad society: we shall form our own good society. The mode conveys both the cozy self-congratulation of the happy few and the further coziness of excluding the tasteless, materialist, immoral many. With such overtones, the familiar epistle has maintained its special attractiveness from Pope through Auden. Once one notes this, one can see how sympathetic such a mode is to the spirit of the Rowley-Canynge circle. Also, since letters can be as formal or informal as the writer wishes and will admit any subject, the writer is free to manipulate subject, supposed author, and supposed recipient uninhibited by any hierarchy of subjects, genres, and styles. A further characteristic of the epistle, whether formal or familiar, would seem to be its almost inevitable tendency toward sat­ ire, though satire need not dominate (personal letters, too, are frequently gossipy). Thus, even in "An Essay on Criticism" and the Essay on Man, both of which are shaped by persuasive moral arguments rather than by a primary intent to attack vice or folly, satiric arguments and instances are a constant resource. The essence of the feeling and structure of Pope's epistles, of which both Rowley and Chatterton are imitators, is sug­ gested by a couplet in Pope's "Epistle to Burlington" on the

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use of riches (note the subject's relevance for Canynge). Pope told Joseph Spence that he had expressed all of the rules of landscape design "in two verses (after my manner, in a very little compass), which are in imitation of Horace's Omne tulit punctum: 'He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds, I Surprises, varies, and conceals the Bounds.' " 6 Since the Horatian model is "Ars Poetica" (11. 343-344), we are perhaps jus­ tified in seeing in Pope's four points analogies to his practice in the poetic landscapes of his epistles. Juxtaposed variety of tone, texture, and subject are suggested by "pleasingly con­ founds" and "varies." The high points of anger or admiration to which his epistles sporadically rise are the "surprises" in these landscapes. The concealed bounds are the openings in medias res and the subtly summarizing personal conclusions that lead us imperceptibly into and out of the poems, much as ha-has once defined without geometrizing the boundaries of "naturally" landscaped estates that were to blend impercepti­ bly with Nature's own workings. Equal care is given to con­ cealing the bounds within the poetic garden: this is the transi­ tional skill for which Pope has been so justly praised. The whole idea of Pope's landscapes, whether topographical or poetical, is that of substantial planning, learning, and wit em­ bodied in apparently spontaneous, relaxed form and texture. As in Mozart's chamber-music style, and as in Pope's view of Nature as implicit order embodied in explicit variety, sur­ prises, contrasts, and freedom, design lurks grandly beneath apparently effortless grace. In all of these effects Pope seems to be Chatterton's model, and though the pupil by no means approaches the master, it is important to see the directions suggested by model and mode. The powerful influence of Pope's satiric epistles appears, we shall see, as early as Rowley's prefatory epistles to Ailla (late 1768 or early 1769). The closely related impact of Charles Churchill's satiric style is more precisely datable. "Journal 6th" (September 1769) is the first unmistakable statement of Chatterton's new freethinking, libertine creed. However, he has not yet, in that odd poem, found a style

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adequate to this new satirical approach to people, institutions, and ideas and to his new posture of aloof, though not neces­ sarily cool, superiority. "Journal 6th" tries three satiric modes—the octosyllabic familiar epistle, the octosyllabic fa­ ble, and the burlesque ode, but none of these are subsequently worked with any persistence. In the "Journal 6th" experiment the models seem to be Pope for the epistolary conventions, and Gay and perhaps Swift and Butler for the octosyllabics. In subsequent verse epistles Pope continues as a major stylistic and structural influence. Yet also present in later epistles and in almost everything satiric Chatterton writes from October 1769 on is the influence of Charles Churchill.7 The possibilities of Churchill's personal and literary mode clearly came home to Chatterton in the four days from 27 to 30 October 1769, during which he wrote 614 lines of verse. Of these, 206 lines are devoted to elegies connected with Thomas Phillips's death and to the related "Epistle to Clayfield," but the other 408 lines are Churchill Chattertonized in two hundred lines of topical satire ("Intrest" [sic], "Conversation," and "Hervenis") and 208 lines of mock con­ tention ("The Constabiliad"). All of this poetry is an exuber­ ant play with techniques learned from Churchill. The Churchillean model is not surprising, for Churchill had developed his mode as a vehicle for freethinking, libertine argument and satire. However, as little of a freethinker as Pope was, it is very difficult to make precise demarcations be­ tween Pope's and Churchill's satiric modes, since the former were a necessary precondition to the development of the lat­ ter. Churchill, by giving central place to certain techniques that for Pope were means, created a new kind of satire. The determining element in the new mode is that the author's stance—in Pope a varying position chosen for its strategic ad­ vantages in various staged conflicts with persons or ideas— becomes less flexible and is elevated from means to subject, a subject nearly always at least equal to and frequently over­ whelming the ostensible topic.8 This shift of emphasis is not lost on Chatterton. In "Epistle to Catcott" we shall see his

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bravado often taking stage center, and in "The Defence" his personal stance will be as strongly defended as the logic of his freethinking. By the "Will" (April 1770) the poet's stance and his relationships with all of Bristol will become the subject. This elevating of satiric stance to satiric subject has impor­ tant consequences for subject, tone, and medium, and for the organization of poems. The morality of satire, its proper con­ duct, the defense of the satirist, and the analysis and expres­ sion of his character become major recurring topics. To be sure, this is already true of Pope's epistles to Arbuthnot and "To Augustus." Second, as the satirist becomes subject, the organization of the poem shifts from one presumed to be in­ herent in the topic or in the poet's view of that topic to an organization that more and more frequently comes to repre­ sent the stream of the satirist's consciousness. In the "Epistle to Arbuthnot" we begin to get this effect: it is difficult to de­ cide whether we are more interested in following the shifting moods and thoughts of the satirist or in noting his orchestra­ tion of the struggle with literary knaves and fools. A new tone also stems from this elevation of satirist to sub­ ject. The apparent spontaneity, ease, unguarded intimacy that Pope used as means to the anatomization of his subject are ex­ aggerated in Churchill into a tone in which spontaneity, di­ gression, "mistakes," being swept along by one's powerful anger or contempt regardless of personal consequences—all of these become a part of the satiric essence. All of these shifts in emphasis work a radical change in syntax. Though the decasyllabic couplet is retained, it shifts from being a tool for thinking with the complex possibilities of its syntactic geometry and becomes a restraining form, useful precisely because overcoming its limits and inherent structural tendencies can suggest the power and spontaneity of the satirical feelings being expressed. We feel their strength by watching them break the bonds of the couplet. Also, there is the virtuosity of seeming to be able to feel in rhyme. Thus, though the couplet is retained, the verse paragraph becomes the primary syntac­ tic unit, and this paragraph is built, not of closed couplets, but

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of long, often periodic sentences extending over many cou­ plets. The ascendancy of the satirist's emotion over an intel­ lectual anatomization of the subject will often be emphasized by lengthy rhetorical periods built from parallel series of sub­ ordinate, conditional elements and climaxing in the denuncia­ tory emotional explosion of the main clause. In such syntactic structures the shape and impact of the periodic sentence have been extended to the verse paragraph. One further Churchillean influence ought to be noted. Chatterton's seven major satiric epistles are all familiar. Four are familiarly addressed to friends and attack others, but three are addressed to their targets. "Walpole!" is, as we shall see, a spontaneous expression of proud anger. However, the "Epis­ tle to Catcott" and the "Will" use the conventions of familiar­ ity for purposes of insolence. In these two pieces we may well be seeing a lesson learned from Churchill's "An Epistle to William Hogarth," which also uses the familiar tone as a weapon. These tendencies of the Churchillean mode, developed from what were for Pope poetic means, are to be seen in Chatterton's verse satire from late October 1769 until his death. The broad literary shifts of horizon involved are not, however, limited to Churchill, Chatterton, or other satirists. The elevating of author to subject, with its organizational, tonal, and stylistic consequences, can be seen in late-century works as diverse as Tristram Shandy, A Sentimental Journey, Humphry Clinker, The Task, and The Deserted Village. All helped to show the way—whether in satire, narrative, meditative verse, or social criticism—toward what was to be­ come, with the Romantics, an almost defining tendency: the focus of attention on the thoughts, feelings, problems, and personality of the poet as the poetic subject par excellence, de­ termining tone, medium, and form. FOUR MODES OF VERSE SATIRE A schematic view can clarify some matters here. Eighteen verse satires and one verse-prose satire (together with a few

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lesser, related pieces) will be dealt with chronologically, for though these pieces fall into four distinguishable modes—sa­ tirical epistles, topical satires, burlesque libretti, mock conten­ tions—the modes are worked intermittently through about two years (autumn 1768 to summer 1770). Chronological treatment will deemphasize categorizing, show influences be­ tween developing modes, and demonstrate significant artistic and biographic sequences. The characteristics and general possibilities of two of the modes—satiric epistle and topical satire—have been suggested in the preceding section. The modal tendencies of burlesque libretto and mock contention will be discussed as exemplars appear in the sequence. The nineteen works group themselves into four fairly dis­ tinct periods and a simple chart (p. 186) can show sequence, modal recurrence and lengthy (sometimes transmodal) bor­ rowings (these last indicated by dotted arrows). In the first period Rowley produces the first sure satiric epistles. The be­ ginnings in the other three modes in autumn 1769 and the epistles of that second period are, as we shall see, less con­ trolled, more fragmentary, predominantly exploratory. In the third period substantial pieces of considerable length, all intended for some sort of Bristol or London publication, grow from earlier experiments in three of the modes. In the final period, I can show, I think, that Chatterton found im­ portant private uses for each of the modes. None of these nineteen satires lack passages of strong poetry; none com­ pletely lack structuring ideas that might have transformed poetry into poems. Yet few of these works are, in fact, achieved poems. I believe this explains in part their previous critical neglect as compared to the major Rowleyan works. The task, then, will be to point out strong poetry and viable poetic ideas and then to suggest why many of these works ultimately fail. Rowley as Pope: Literary Targets Pope is everywhere in Rowley's two prefatory epistles to Ailla and in the brief Pope-like note "To John Ladgate" of a slightly earlier date. All three works are doing multiple duty.

186

PERIOD

Chatterton's

SATIRIC EPISTLES

Roweleyan satires (late 1768 to February 1769)

Epistle to Canynge

Exploratory pieces (JulyOctober 1769)

Walpole!

BURLESQUE LIBRETTI

Art

MOCK CONTENTIONS

TOPICAL SATIRES

Letter to Canynge

Amphitryon Journal 6th (whole)

Ode (in Journal) Intrest Conversation Hervenis Constabiliad

Pieces for publication (November 1769- March 1770)

Happiness

Epistle to Catcott The Defence

y

Consuliad Whore of Babylon Resignation" Personal pieces (April-June 1770)

¥

V IkKew Gardens The Will

y

The Revenge

' Exhibition A \

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In the second chapter we saw their function in preparing readers for particular aspects of "Songe toe Ella" and Ailla. They are also used to suggest or embody Pope-like facets of Rowley's character, and the two Ailla epistles stand up as per­ suasive poetic credos. "To John Ladgate" suggests a situation that brings out the excellence of Rowley's character and foils the effortless mas­ tery of his poetry. Lydgate has challenged him to a literary competition, "a boutynge matche," and Rowley, very diffi­ dent about his own ability, is concerned only that "it ne breakynge of oulde Freendshyppe doe." He fully expects to be outclassed by Lydgate. When such carelessness about reputa­ tion and carefulness about friendship are followed by the prosodic virtuosity of "Songe toe Ella" and, in turn, by Lydgate's limp, prosodically gauche, pedantic response, Chatterton verges on overkill. The Rowley he hopes to suggest, though, has affinities with the Pope who cries out to Arbuthnot, "Heavens! was I born for nothing but to write? I Has life no joys for me? or (to be grave) I Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save?" The Rowley poem conveys the char­ acter of a man for whom effortlessly brilliant poetry is a de­ precated avocation, who values friendship far above literary reputation. Jeremiah Milles, whose 1782 edition of Rowley was so exhaustive and yet so wrongheaded, and who cites the paral­ lels between the two Hastings poems and Pope's translations of Homer to show that Rowley had read classical authors that Chatterton could not read, frequently has, nevertheless, acute critical insights. He noted that the two epistolary prologues to Mlla are "not unlike [Pope] in the Stile of his Epistles and Satires." 9 There are indeed close affinities both with Pope's epistle technique generally and with the specific attitudes, figures, and phrasing of "An Essay on Criticism," the "Epis­ tle to Arbuthnot," and the Horatian imitation "To Augus­ tus." For Rowley Chatterton borrows Pope's voice as the learned, gifted, self-deprecating poet, and for Canynge he borrows the Walsh to whose correcting hand Pope submitted

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his early work and the Bolingbroke to whose example the persuasive mastery of An Essay on Man is so gracefully attrib­ uted. In Rowley's case the work is, of course, ΑϊΙΙα. Chatterton's simple arguments about poetry are fleshed out and given force by the use of satirical portraits of poetasters and by dramatized literary disputes. The letter format makes possible grace, ease, and intimacy—the reader feels he has been admit­ ted to the high converse of a morally and aesthetically superior community. Pope has taught Chatterton how tone and texture can unite a predominantly satiric miscellany of thought into an urbane, nonpedantic whole, can shift easily from subject to subject, can allow the poet "happily to steer I From grave to gay, from lively to severe; I Correct, with spirit; eloquent, with ease; I Intent to reason, or polite to please." The conclusions to Rowley's epistles, like Pope's, are personal codas that are more than format. They symbolize the ultimate values of the community suggested—friendship among learned, genteel, relaxed equals—and they break us imperceptibly from the world of the poem into our own world. The shaping principle of "Epistle to Mastre Canynge on Allla" is, mutatis mutandis and allowing for its brevity, quite close to that of Pope's "Epistle to Arbuthnot 1 " and we recall that Pope used that epistle as his "Prologue to the Satires." Both poems are persuasive arguments about poetry that use the epistle format for an informal attack, by direct argument and satiric portraiture, on the current literary scene; an osten­ sibly diffident apology for one's own very different poetry; and a summarizing personal coda. The friendship is used to assume community of taste and to laugh at the tastelessness of others. Rowley's specific attacks are on ribaldry and pride in clerical poetry, pretty but toothless satire, pendantry, sen­ sationalism, tasteless audiences, mechanically produced verse, and verse without content. The topics are close to the spirit of Pope, and the language sometimes rivals his in vividness and in apparently effortless comic effect, if not in pithiness. We hear echoes of Pope's attacks in the "Epistle to Arbuthnot."

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Syr Johne tortures his brain for Latin. Vevyan is a sen­ sationalist: "Hee synges of seynctes who dyed for yer Godde, I Everych wynter nyghte afresche he sheddes theyr blodde." Vevyan's admiring audience is reminiscent of Pope's theatrical mob in "To Augustus": "He swelles on laudes of fooles, tho' kennes hem [them] soe. I Sometyme at tragedie theie laughe and synge, I At merrie yaped fage [laughable jest] somme hard-drayned water brynge." Yet even Vevyan is superior to Geofroie's mass produced noth­ ingness: Geofroie makes vearse, as handycraftes theyr ware; Wordes wythoute sense full groffyngelye3 he twynes, Cotteynge hys storie off as wythe a sheere; Wrytes monthes on nothynge, and hys storie donne, Ne moe you from ytte kenn, than gyf^ you neere begonne. Again we are dealing with a Rowleyan equivalent of a Popean butt. The major departure in this "Epistle" from the sorts of things to be found in the "Epistle to Arbuthnot" is in the con­ tent of the concluding apology and credo. In the apology Chatterton asks for Canynge's corrections as Pope asked for and, in the conclusion to "An Essay on Criticism," acknowl­ edged Walsh's corrections. In the credo, Chatterton argues the superiority of the sort of subject used in Ailla ("Lette somme greate storie of a manne be songe") to the sacrilege of subjects too high or the obscenity of words too low—this last recalling not only the attack on ribaldry at the epistle's open­ ing, but also Pope's attacks on obscenity in "An Essay on Criticism" and the epistle "To Augustus." The relaxed use of the shorter Rowleyan stanza (a b a b c c, with final alexandrine) is analogous to the couplet flexibility in the Arbuthnot epistle. One or two stanzas are allotted to each section of Chatterton's argument, but this is not rigid. Line 7, for example, carries the first stanza into the second, and line 31 carries the subject of the fourth and fifth into the "foolishly

"if

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sixth. Chatterton is less polar, less balanced in his thought and expression than Pope, but the first stanza contrasts with the second in a then-now sequence. Also, the first stanza through the sixth contrast with the seventh through the eighth by set­ ting the jocular-satiric particular attack over against the diffi­ dent, sober proposal of principle. The diction is at Pope's middle level, occasionally effectively homely. "Letter to the Dygne Mastre Canynge" is more closely argued, though the argument is still persuasive rather than probative. It is not, in structure, as close to any specific Pope poem, though the general method is frequently Pope's: an ar­ gument by contrasts and by quarreling with a conveniently constructed opponent. The Pope-Arbuthnot ambience is maintained. It is a familiar epistle—with the suggestion of the small, superior community—arguing for the free treatment of an historical subject. In view of Chatterton's predominantly factual antiquarian production during October and Novem­ ber 1768 (presumably with Barrett's history in mind), it is perhaps fair to assume that this letter has personal feeling in it—relief at turning to Ailla and poetry from history, topog­ raphy, and heraldry—as well as being an apology for his free fiction making in Ailla. One particular passage has been taken by Milles10 and Meyerstein (Life, p. 235) as a criticism of Pope's sort of endstopped couplets. "Saie, Canynge, whatt was vearse yn daies of yore: I Fyne thoughtes, and couplettes fetyvelie bewryen [elegantly expressed], I Notte syke as doe annoie thys age so sore, / A keppened poyntelle [cautious pen or muse] restynge at eche lyne. I Vearse maie be goode, botte poesie wantes more, I An onlist lecturn [boundless subject], and a songe adygne [nervous, praiseworthy]." The context, however, forces us to read "keppened" as "cautious" and to take the passage as a more general protest against cautious plodding in poetry. The influence of particular Pope passages is seen most strongly at the height of the argument for freedom.

i9i

Satiric Worlds and Modes

Instedde of mountynge onn a wynged horse, You onn a rouncya dryve yn dolefull course. Cannynge and I from common course dyssente; Wee ryde the stede, botte yevb to hym the reene; Ne wylle between Crasedc molterynge bookes be pente Botte soare on hyghe, and yn the sonne-bemes sheene; And where wee kenn somme ishadd floures besprentee We take ytte, and from oulde rouste doe ytte clene; We wylle ne chaynedd to one pasture bee, Botte sometymes soare 'bove trouthe of hystorie. The overall image is borrowed from Pope's "Essay on Criti­ cism" argument for wit as control: " 'Tis more to guide, than spur the Muse's steed; I Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed: I The winged courser, like a generous horse, I Shows most true mettle when you check his course." Within Chatterton's lines, the "erased molterynge bookes" recall Pope's "Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey" from the same poem. In both cases, it is a figure or an image that has caught Chatterton's fancy, but he has turned it to his own very dif­ ferent uses. Because the argument is tighter than in Rowley's "Epistle" the stanza breaks in "Letter" correspond to stages in the ar­ gument. Because it is abstract, the assistance of a vigorous visual imagery from everyday life is sought: "shapelie poesie" is contrasted to "pynant [shrunken] hystorie." A puzzled "greybeard" is borrowed from Hudibras: "A man ascaunse upponn a piece may looke I And shake hys hedde to styrre hys rede about." Pegasus is contrasted to a cart horse. The existence of the two separate prefatory epistles raises a puzzling question: why not combine them in one more sub­ stantial, livelier apology for Ailla7. The "epistle," attacking poetasters and pleading for a dignified subject, is jocular and satirical. The "letter" attacks pedantic learned tastes; the dea cart-horse d broken

"give "scattered

"broken, old

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Chatterton's Art

mand is for imaginative freedom in subject and treatment. The two together could have made a more varied satiric epis­ tle in Pope's manner. Possibly the ideas came at distinct times or possibly Chatterton wished to keep the two ideas and the two tones distinct, but he had Pope's example to show how such distinct elements might be gracefully combined.

Satiric Experiments: Personal and Social Targets

Walpole first enthusiastically welcomed, then rejected Row­ ley. From these relaxed Rowleyan satiric epistles it is half a year to the anger of "Walpole!" (July 1769). Fierce resentment at being found out is at the heart of this direct couplet attack on the antiquary. Spontaneity is attested by the omitted line and a half, whose intent is nevertheless quite clear from the tightness and steady direction of the moral argument that shapes the poem. It is, then, a satiric verse letter addressed to its target without irony. The attack is double: on Walpole's supposed meanness of heart, leading him to fawn on equals and superiors while scorning a social inferior such as he had discovered Chatterton to be (see Works, II, 956), and on the hypocrisy of the author of Otranto resenting the Rowley fic­ tion. These points asserted, Chatterton can conclude with proud defiance: we are unequal now, and so you can insult me with impunity, "But I shall live and Stand I By Rowley's side—when Thou art dead and damned." Fairness to Walpole is not to be expected here. The vigor and economy of the at­ tack and the weaknesses it points out make this poem, in spite of the unfairness, an effective expression of angry pride. If Chatterton's sister had not persuaded him not to send it, Wal­ pole might have reacted as generously as he did in his first let­ ter to Chatterton, before he suspected any hoax. The strength of the poet's feeling, though, is understandable, for this is just four months after the golden promise of that first Walpole letter. About a month later the burletta "Amphitryon" (August

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1769), written in the middle of Chatterton's indecisive months between Rowley and the first freethinking satires, appears. In almost every aspect of the burletta we see how de­ cisively he has turned his back on Rowley. He has moved in comic texture from the cool amusement at the mob in the Rowleyan epistles to a crowd-pleasing low comedy, from urbane didacticism to a burlesque mimesis of gross action, from his idealization of England's fifteenth century to a travesty of classical mythology. "Amphitryon" is the first of a stylistically related group of burlesque libretti. In three substantial and two fragmentary such works Chatterton combines two strong affinities—for music and for low burlesque. In his letters and in "Kew Gar­ dens" he writes confident, articulate music criticism, and the strongly "musical" structure of Ailla and his fine prosodic ear have already suggested a temperament responsive to that art. His taste for burlesque has led to parody of the Rowleyan heroic ("The Romance of the Knight"), and he will later parody Ossian's heroics. As early as 1764 he wrote something like a burlesque libretto in "I've let my Yard." The combina­ tion of these interests in "Amphitryon" and the mockmusical ode on George Whitefield in "Journal 6th" seem to have been catalyzed by his seeing Kane O'Hara's burletta Midas on 11 August 1769.11 Chatterton can have had little prospect of sale or performance of such work in Bristol, but in May-June 1770 in London three more burlesque libretti take up the dropped mode, for then, as we shall see, Chatterton came upon real prospects for both performance and pub­ lication. The styles of the five libretti are similar, though the subjects are about as miscellaneous as could be imagined. Of three of them Chatterton uses the word burletta and a fourth is called burlesque. We are tracing his work in a particular mode of which he was distinctly aware, then, and we must define bur­ letta as Chatterton perceived it. It means for him a slangy, low, contemporaneously colored musical treatment of any sort of action. In "Amphitryon" and "The Revenge" the sub-

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ject is classical myth; in the ode it is Methodism—for Chatterton a low subject; in "A Burlesque Cantata" it is Bristol low life and in "The Woman of Spirit" it is London high life. When the subject is heroic, the heroic elements are heavily bur­ lesqued by a low diction, the addition of a low subplot, and the reduction of the heroic action to its lowest possible ele­ ments. When the subject is modern low life, as in the Whitefield ode and the cantata fragment concerning a Bristol collier and his love, the grotesque in the subject is heavily under­ lined. When it is modern high life, the chief actor and actress become Maggie andjiggs. All five pieces retain conventional musical-heroic trappings so that these may also be bur­ lesqued. Anything potentially heroic in the subject and all heroic decor and machinery in the borrowed conventions of musical ode, cantata, and opera are burlesqued by diction, comic action, and the consequently gross gap between subject and convention on the one hand and treatment on the other. The total effect is the comedy of seeing the heroic reduced— by inappropriate subject or by appropriate subject gro­ tesquely handled in random, all-out slapstick. The style guarantees, in short, that whether the shaping principle lies in some sort of imitation or in an argument, there will always be a strong didactic element, as if to say, "For all our fine preten­ sions, this is how life really is." The constant slighting suggestion of "higher" views gives the leveling a persistent aggressiveness. Eric White has shown that "Amphitryon" borrows its plot from John Hawkesworth's alteration of Dryden's Amphi­ tryon, its mode from Kane O'Hara's burletta. Juno, who does not appear in Dryden, is also borrowed from Midas. 12 Since the piece is a fragment and since the dramatis personae lists two characters not in Dryden's play, we cannot be sure about plot direction except to say that it would have been a bur­ lesque version of the engendering of Hercules. Chatterton gets through only three scenes. The completed action of "The Revenge," which borrows many lines from "Amphitryon," will show a strong didactic tendency. In "Amphitryon,"

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however, we have a studio piece: Chatterton apparently bor­ rows enough story from Dryden to see if he can handle the mode, proves to himself that he can, and drops it for the time. Story is an excuse, a framework on which the low-burlesque view of life can be tested; the treatment selects from a tradi­ tional subject whatever gives that treatment the greatest scope. There are lively airs and bits of recitative, but "Am­ phitryon" has not yet moved from experiment in mode to work. The musical ode on Whitefield, "In His Wooden Palace Jumping," is one of four poems in "Journal 6th" (September 1769) to Baker. This "journal," as has been noted, is Chatterton's first clear statement of his freethinking libertinism, though one might argue that the libertine component has been there at least since his 6 March letter to Baker (see Works, I, 256f). The format too recalls that letter, but there is an im­ portant difference—the letter is a display of styles with the framing and connecting device of the jocular style of male friendship. "Journal 6th" has no such framing and connecting texture: it consists of four distinct poems, though of the first we have only the conclusion. There are friendly transitions between the first and second and between the third and fourth, but none at all between the second and third poems. There is a conclusion, but the opening that must have pre­ ceded the first poem is, of course, lost. The four poems were clearly composed in haste—without corrections or even the most rudimentary punctuation. Nor are the four subjects closely connected. We have the conclusion of a freethinking, arguing verse epistle, the whole of a satiric fable about two clergymen, the whole of a verse epistle satirizing male ama­ tory stances (to be treated later in this chapter), and the Whitefield ode. The common denominators are attack and whatever ground freethinking and libertinism may be thought to share. Chatterton is testing his scarcely fledged satiric wings with Baker and so we could describe the journal as a libertine, freethinking satiric miscellany with occasional asides to a friend rather than as a self-contained familiar epis-

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tie. The quality of Chatterton's feelings for Baker in both the letter cited and in this journal is not one of intense affection. One gets more the feeling that Baker was for the poet an un­ derstanding and admiring friend upon whom he could test his efforts without anxiety and who sometimes seems to have stimulated his creativity. He always seems to be strutting when he writes to Baker. Baker's feelings, we can quickly see from his side of this trans-Atlantic correspondence (Works, I, 165, 173), are warmer, simpler, and wholeheartedly admir­ ing. The ode on Whitefield is an experiment with more than the burletta mode. It is a burlesque ode in which the narrative proceeds in stages in the contemptuous narrator's recitative: we are guided by him through the violent variety of one Whitefield sermon. The narrative pauses from time to time for a preaching aria from Whitefield himself. The subjects brought out through this moving-halting progress are Whitefield's motley preaching style and his harping, what­ ever his style, on the collection plate. The mock Pindaric, its prosody low-rhapsodic, its diction grotesque and coarse, reinforces the low-comic impact of subject and movement. Bristol was an early center of Wesleyan activity. Whitefield opened the Tabernacle in Penn Street in 1753 and the picture given here of his violent preaching is apparently not as exag­ gerated as one might suppose. 13 That Chatterton was fasci­ nated by the Methodists we can see in "Apostate Will," the introduction to his own "Will," and "The Methodist." The burlesque lies in heightening what were to him already grotesqueries in Methodist mores and in adapting the conven­ tions of the musical ode to this low subject. The poem, how­ ever, is finally didactic. Burletta style and the action outlined above are being used to make an evaluative-descriptive state­ ment about Whitefield and his flock. With these two pieces of musical burlesque in early autumn 1769 Chatterton is firmly started in his new satirical direction, but the mode offers, in Bristol, too little scope. In October he finds a mode that can be immediately exploited, even in Bris-

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tol. The satiric style and stance of Charles Churchill are dis­ covered and, as we have noted, feverishly mined in the last four days of October. Here the air indeed changes. "Amphi­ tryon" and the Whitefield ode are fun and games to the per­ sonal and topical scarification and the libertine cynicism of these pieces. The first of them is "Intrest," one of the modern pieces that Rossetti categorized as "Perfect specimens."14 "Intrest" is shaped as a quarrel in the poet's mind that is decided one way while the poem itself moves irresistibly in the opposite direction. In the quarrel Interest and Prudence win out over Honor, but in the poem itself the "honest" satiric impulse overcomes Prudence. In the first paragraph, Chatterton decides that self-interest rather than honor must dictate to his muse; he will, therefore, flatter. Intrest thou universal God of Men Wait on the Couplet and reprove the Pen If aught unwelcome to thy Ears shall rise HoldJayl and Famine to the Poets Eyes Bid Satyre sheathe her sharp avenging Steel And lose a Number rather than a meal Nay, prethee Honor, do not make me mad When I am hungry something must be had Can honest Consciousness of doing Right Provide a Dinner or a Girl at Night What tho' Astrea decks my Soul in Gold My mortal Lumber trembles with the Cold Then curst Tormentor of my Peace begone Flattery's a Cloak and I will put it on The debate about prudence is a constant in the satire of both Chatterton and Churchill, but nowhere else in either poet is it more sharply stated. In the second paragraph we might expect, therefore, Flat­ tery, but get instead a version of Pope's ruling passion theory to demonstrate that, from infancy, Burgum (Tervono) was all merchant: "The ragged Chapmen found his Word a Law / And lost in Barter evry fav'rite Taw." His precocious

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mercantile triumphs set the course of Burgum's adult life, and Chatterton concludes the paragraph by a partial denial of Pope's psychology. Tervono's adult vices, drunkenness and gluttony, are too mean to be understood as the misapplication of reason to a ruling passion. The ruling passion was, paradoxically, more obvious in Burgum at six than it now shows, muddled with vices, in maturity. In the final paragraph Chatterton returns to the Prudence vs. Interest argument and swears cynically he will flatter Burgum despite all that he knows. Yet the poem, of course, has done the opposite of what Prudence has decided. The impact is that, despite all that Interest demands of him, the satirist is too honest, when seized by "the rage of Satire," to lie. That rage is central to the satiric stance of both Churchill and Chatterton, and in both, as a consequence, the character of the satirist is as much if not more the subject as any ostensible target. Rossetti, in his high praise of the poem, seems to have missed the irony implicit in its structure. "Certainly that most vigorous passage commencing: 'Interest, thou universal God of men, &c.' reads startlingly, and comes in a questionable shape. What is the answer to its enigmatical aspect? Why, that he meant it, and that all would mean it at his age, who had his power, his daring, and his hunger." 15 Rossetti has not seen that the "boy" had written a poem contradicting this thesis while promulgating it. "Conversation" (my supplied title for the topical satire be­ ginning "Far from the reach of Critics and Reviews"—the line itself reminiscent of Churchill's "Apology") is the open­ ing of what was probably planned as a much lengthier satire on the model of Churchill's The Times, whose subject is, eventually, pederasty. "Conversation" is broken off abruptly at line 88 when Chatterton gets premature news of Thomas Phillips's death. Interestingly enough, this news and an earlier pause from exhaustion at line 46 are incorporated into the text of the poem, thus heightening the improvisatory, helterskelter tone while boasting at the speed of compostion—144 lines in two hours. I take this facility and excitement as a

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symptom of the stimulus afforded by the newly discovered Churchillean mode. The fragment is a discursive couplet satire on "conversa­ tion" in Bristol. As far as Chatterton gets, two facets of the subject are covered and a direction seems established. Con­ versation literally understood is covered by attacks on Delia's scandal-mongering and George Catcott's alehouse triumphs. Catcott often brings out the best in Chatterton's satiric por­ traiture. Upon his Elbow throne great Maro sits Revered at Forsters by the Would-be Wits Delib'rately the Study'd Jest he breaks And long and loud the Polish'd Table shakes Retail'd in every Brothel house in town Each dancing Booby vends it as his own Upon the empty'd Jelly Glass reclin'd The laughing Maro gathers up his Wind The Tail-Cu'd 'Prentice Rubs his hands and grins Ready to laugh before the Tale begins The portrait is adapted from Swift's Battus in "On Poetry," but the economically sketched visual effects give Chatterton's scene an edge. The poem breaks off just as Chatterton has got well into a strong satiric sketch, heavily influenced by Pope's description of Belinda's dressing table, on another sort of conversation. We are pretty clearly about to move from the polite conversa­ tion of a Council House ball to the criminal conversation to follow. The little God of Love improves discourse And sage Discretion finds his Thunder hoarse About the flame the gilded Trifles play Till lost in Joys Unknown they melt away . . . Ye painted Guardians of the lovely fair Who spread the saffron bloom and tinge the Hair Whose deep Invention first found out the Art Of making rapture grow in evry Part?

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It is easy to imagine Chatterton moving from this into a satire on Bristol criminal conversation and then on to the pederasty that Savage had attacked in London and Bristol Compared and that Chatterton later attacks in "The Whore of Babylon" and "Kew Gardens." This is conjecture, of course, but in har­ mony with both stated topic and new model. "Hervenis" (Sunday, 29 October 1769) brings the Churchillean satirist into Bristol Cathedral. Bishop Newton's man­ nerisms are ridiculed; then Chatterton turns from the sermon to gloat on the ostentatious sexuality of the female worship­ ers. He concludes with a mocking description of the eighteenth-century funerary monuments that clutter the medieval walls. The poem is structured as the satiric equiva­ lent of a landscape poem: we move from sight to sight, fol­ lowing the moods and strokes of the observing satirist. He, characterized by tone and the direction of his thought, is the true subject; the poem imitates the movements of his mind rather than the sights in the cathedral. The topical coherence of the Churchillean satiric mode has been subjected to increasing internal pressure. "Intrest" kept to its topic, cleverly using the debate about prudence to satirize Burgum as if by accident. In "Conversation" Chatterton has more than one target, but the gradual shift in the meaning of the topic word (from actual conversation, to criminal "conversation," to homosexual "conversation," if I have correctly guessed the intended direction) allows him to deal wittily with the varied targets under the one ostensible topic. By "Hervenis" the satirist's roving attention has be­ come the ordering device, but since all that is observed is present within Bristol Cathedral, we can allow the loose coherence of a landscape poem. In "Happiness" (see the be­ ginning of the next section) his roving anger has become detectably impatient with topical restraint. He has several targets and several things to say about each, and when he reaches Dr. Frances Woodward, Chatterton gives the stated topic only the briefest of formal nods. The day after writing "Hervenis" Chatterton hit upon a

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device that could bring many satiric portraits, narratives, and denunciations into coherence. "The Constabiliad" (30 Octo­ ber) is a mock contention; its political revision of 4 January 1770, "The Consuliad," keeps to this pattern. Also, Chatterton uses the mock contention again, though in a somewhat more complex form, in his last couplet satire on Bristol, "The Exhibition: A Personal Satire" (May 1770). The first necessity in this mode is to find a cause for a quarrel that shall allow all those one wishes to satirize to participate. Its primary formal advantage is that the satiric targets can be described, dis­ cussed, and attacked by the narrator and can also be allowed to perform and speak so as to demonstrate their folly and knavery. A mimetic technique, the imitation of an imaginary action, is used for essentially didactic purposes. Imitating a dispute allows satiric persuasion to constantly shift method and subject, even within portraits, whereas a topical organiza­ tion of persuasion almost demands that the satirist stick at least loosely to one line of argument. A further advantage accrues. The contenders in a mock quarrel are usually, to themselves at least, important people: they must maintain a decorum. When this decorum breaks down or when the decorum demanded is too lofty for the contenders, mock-heroic or burlesque effects arise. In mockheroic, decorum is maintained, and the satire lies in the steady gap between the targets' pretensions and the essential triv­ iality that the heroic decorum reveals. In burlesque the Iudicrousness of heroic treatment becomes so rapidly apparent that decorum constantly breaks down into farce and coarse­ ness, and just as constantly tries to reassert itself—all with comic effect. Temperamental affinity as well as the nature of his subjects and the less delicate formal demands of burlesque all led Chatterton toward that comic pole. Chatterton could have had hints for mock contention from Chaucer's Parlement of Foules as well as from his own quite serious and consistently heroic "Parlyamente of Sprytes." Note, however, that both of these parliaments concentrate on the topic under discussion. The love questions raised by the

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problems of Chaucer's three tercels and the formel are deepened, not forgotten, in the delicate comedy of the debate. Likewise in "Parlyamente" Rowley's speakers are chosen as particularly suited to judge the glory of RedclifF Church and so redound to Canynge's praise. In these mock debates, on the other hand, the subject is little more than excuse or catalyst for satire; it makes it reasonable that the speakers should sequentially expose their folly and knavery. It is more likely, therefore, that Churchill rather than Chaucer has given Chatterton his hint. Churchill's Rosciad consists of two mock contentions, the first to decide what judges shall preside at the trial to determine Roscius's successor, the second to allow each aspiring actor and actress to be satirized before Shake­ speare and Jonson make judgment in Garrick's favor. We know that Chatterton borrowed lines from The Rosciad (see Works, index), and the title echo strengthens Churchill's claim. 16 In "The Constabiliad" Chatterton attacks the vestrymen of an unnamed parish, perhaps his own. He sets them, therefore, at a characteristic action, the notorious gluttony of a vestry dinner. Chatterton seems to have had a sort of fascinated dis­ gust at heavy feeding. Canynge's aldermen-diners are an ear­ lier instance: The Ealdermenne doe lye arounde Ande snoffelle oppe the cheorte 3 steeme Lyke asses wylde ynne desarte waste Swotellye b the Morneynge Ayre doe taste Part of this has been picked up and expanded in the opening of "The Constabiliad." Spread round the Table evry Brother sat Now tearing bloody Lean now champing Fat Now mangling with resistless Teeth the chine OfPullet slain at sacred Friendships Shrine "cheerful or redolent of cheer (i.e., food)

"sweetly

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Now swall'wing Rivers of almighty Beer Now sucking Tallow of salubrious Deer The Epicurean God of Vestrys saw His Sons like Asses to one Centre draw The middle-class target of the attack is clear from "Friend­ ships Shrine"—Bristol Exchange, adjacent to the Welsh poul­ try market. The cause of the quarrel is a toast interrupted by an insult, which is interrupted in turn by a hurled half-carved pigeon. The mangled Pigeon thunders on his Face His op'ning Mouth the Melted Butter fills And dropping from his Nose and Chin distills With squashing Noise the Weapon Pigeon sounds And back upon the groning Plate rebounds We may let these lines stand for the physical aspects of the one hundred fifty lines of greasy donnybrook that follow. The twelve warriors have pseudonyms—Thrimso, Bumbulkins, Sallust, and so on—that would help Bristolians identify them. Also, most are given characterizing physical oddities and temperamental quirks: Thrimso stammers and is race and family proud, Bumbulkins farts loudly, and Sallust is doveeyed. Speeches are occasionally delivered, but the debate is more often carried on with food, drink, cutlery, and bottles. The quarrel is, in fact, the gustatorial equivalent of the Hast­ ings gore, with frequent heroic echoes: "Sauces encountred Sauces Bottles smashed I Butter with Butter swims Knives with Knives clash." The battle ends only when Tyro warns them that "The Vestry quarrels and the poor have bread." They are overwhelmingly greedy and quarrelsome—mid­ dle-class yahoos. The action moves along, again, by body bil­ liards, this time more appropriate. An insult only is needed to set off the elaborate physical reaction; an appeal to prostrated greed turns it off with equal dispatch. Comic response here rests on our tastes for scandal and gross physical comedy.

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For Publication: Religious and Political Targets With "Happiness" (26 November 1769) we come to the sat­ ires intended for publication: its portrait of George Catcott appeared in Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, and Catcott oddly took it as a positive sort of notoriety for himself, if not pre­ cisely as eulogy. Catcott set the topic for Chatterton, naively hoping that it might lead the budding freethinker back into orthodoxy. It is a discursive satire, embellished with exempla. The tone and central argument of the whole are estab­ lished by the first four lines: Since Happiness was not ordained for Man Let's make ourselves as easy as we can Possest with Fame or Fortune Friend or Whore But think it Happiness we want no more. The ostensible frame is the attack on religious notions of hap­ piness together with the skeptical urging that our inclinations are the road to contentment. The essence of this argument is that religion gives imaginary happiness, that priestcraft for­ bids real happiness or turns people toward insubstantial, self-deceiving obsessions, trifles that are both foolish and evil. Here follow the illustrative attacks on Catcott himself and other Bristolians. Insofar as the poem holds together, it is fairly close, again, to Pope's ruling-passion theory. Not all of the portraits prove germane to the ostensible ar­ gument, and one gradually feels that the given topic provides a rather flimsy thread on which the poet strings a series of at­ tacks on those who share only his scorn, rather than relevance to the thesis. The best attacks are on George Catcott and Dr. Frances Woodward. The Catcott satire fits well enough with the thesis for fourteen lines: his happiness is to have his name remembered—for that he hammers out pewter plaques, climbs church steeples to affix them, and crosses unfinished bridges on planks. Yet the satire gains force when Chatterton leaves his thesis to counsel a better route to "Perpetuity of name."

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On Matrimonial Pewter set thy hand Hammer with every Powr thou canst command. Stamp thy whole Self original as 'tis To propagate thy Whimsys Name and Phyz Then when the tottring Spires or Chimneys fall A Catcott shall remain admired by all The Woodward attack (from which Chattertonjumps with only a "But to return" to his concluding argument) hardly pretends to relevance. Woodward "Is never happy but when taking Fees," but this is merely a gesture toward coherence. The essence of the attack is on what Woodward ought to have been as opposed to what Education has made of him. O Education ever in the Wrong To thee the Curses of Mankind belong . . . On ev'ry Atom of the Doctor's frame Nature had stamp'd the Pedant with his Name But thou hast made him (ever wast thou blind) A Licens'd Butcher of the Human kind. Woodward was at Chatterton's father's deathbed; whether this has anything to do with the vehemence and topical irrele­ vance of the attack may be considered. A further weakness of the poem is that much of Chatterton's framing argument is obscurely expressed. The prelimi­ nary attack on "Revelation Sphere-envelop'd Dame" (cf. Rev. 12:1) is an example. The poem has strong satiric pas­ sages, but Chatterton failed to find a shaping idea that could turn these into an expressive whole. "Happiness" too was written in one evening. The Churchillean mode catalyzed once more his poetic drive. Nothing he does in it is valueless, though the value may lie only in successful passages, as in "Happiness," or in total poems with a pervasive satiric vigor and a structure having its particular impact, as in "Intrest." Once more, this time with the help of Churchill, he has struck a mine, a mode nicely matched to the new freethinking, libertine stance. Chatterton had a more serious quarrel with George Cat-

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cott's clerical brother Alexander, and after the Churchillean "Happiness" he returns to Pope's epistolary method to write two substantial poems, "Epistle to the Revd. Mr. Catcott" and "The Defence." For both poems circulation to Alexander Catcott and his Bristol admirers and detractors would be pub­ lication enough. The epistle is directly addressed to Catcott; "The Defence" attacks everything Catcott stood for, but is addressed familiarly to Chatterton's friend William Smith—it grants Catcott only a single, contemptuous direct reference. "The Epistle" (16-20 December 1769) is Chatterton's most ambitious freethinking poem. It is a morally and intellectually persuasive argument, with constant satiric applications, against Catcott's Treatise on the Deluge. The latter work was a learned attempt to harmonize the biblical account of creation and deluge with eighteenth-century geology.17 One will not fully understand Chatterton's poem without first reading the Treatise, but a summary of Chatterton's organizing argument can give a fair representation both of the issues involved and of the nonprobative method of attack. Catcott's was the most substantial and best-educated intel­ lect Chatterton ever encountered. The poet begins this act of rebellion, then, at the very heart of the matter—an attack on the infatuation of the learned with systems and on the symptoms of this favored-thesis malady in Catcott (11. 1-46). The motivation for such learned folly is, Chatterton suggests, preferment seeking, and here other Bristol clergymen are used as supporting evidence (11. 47-78). Catcott's favored thesis is "proved" by his hermeneutic approach to scripture, which "racks each Metaphor upon a wheel" until the needed interpretation is extorted. Whole systems are founded on tor­ tured readings. Moses is thus turned into an eighteenthcentury geologist, and the system builder accomplishes this metamorphosis without realizing that it explodes fundamen­ tally the doctrine of divine inspiration (11. 79-128). The moral of all of this very substantial argument is an appeal for intel­ lectual diffidence and candor (11. 129-148). After proposing five specific challenges to the Treatise (11. 149-172; see Works, II, 1018), Chatterton states his own deis-

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tic, nonlatitudinary, nonpantheist position, including the "credo" quoted early in this chapter (11. 173-188). Much in the manner of Rochester, he compares the pedant to the "Man of Sense," setting up Catcott as the former, Burgum (!) as the latter (11. 189-232): "His Gold is Bullion yours debas'd with Brass I Imprest with Folly's head to make it pass." Chatterton concludes with a powerful narrative-satiric sketch bringing out Catcott's self-infatuation and comparing Alexander's triumphs in his "fossilary" before "wondring Cits" to his empty-headed brother George's alehouse triumphs (11. 233-

268). That is the effective persuasive structure of the argument. As for the strategic manipulation of the resources of the verse epistle, Catcott, the ostensible recipient, is effectively pegged in a rigidly orthodox self-satisfaction. Only in the final few lines is he offered the possibility of some sort of rational and dignified flexibility. The poet's stance is that of the child prod­ igy who defeats objection by protesting that dismissal of his rational arguments can only be the proud refusal of age to hear youth out. The overhearing audience is nudged into making the obvious choice between joining Catcott's mind­ less admirers or his substantial critics, men such as Chatterton and Clayfxeld. The tempo and force of the argument shift nicely from lucid general attack to apposite specific objection to satiric narrative and the appeal to a "better" Catcott. However, the psychological precariousness of Chatterton's aggressive stance in the epistle is suggested by the odd post­ script, which suddenly reveals, without actually retracting anything, the uncertainty behind the poet's bravado. I have argued elsewhere the ambivalence of this postscript and of Chatterton's whole relationship to Alexander Catcott.18 He was the one Bristolian Chatterton most wished to impress and every work that can be connected with him shows this determination to be acknowledged—either as admired pro­ tege or as freethinking rebel. Whatever the personal dimen­ sions of the poem, it is a more substantial satiric epistle than has been hitherto allowed. "The Defence," the familiar satiric epistle addressed to

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Chatterton's friend William Smith, clearly grows out of Bris­ tol criticism of the poet's freethinking. Since it is written, provocatively enough, on Christmas 1769, just five days after the "Epistle to Catcott," it is a response to anticipated or ac­ tual criticism of that poem. It is an impromptu, spontaneous response. The line of argument if rough-hewn, but the stance of careless independence and the intimate tone toward Smith are well used. The two of them will follow reason and disre­ gard the carping of quarreling, idiotic claimants to ortho­ doxy. Following the argument will reveal lapses in coherence and carelessness about emphasis. Nevertheless, since the os­ tensible addressee is presumed to share Chatterton's free­ thinking, the poet can allude sketchily to shared beliefs, can laugh with his friend over the follies of the orthodox, and can revel in a shared rational freedom to believe and do as they please. This conclusion, oddly enough, is borrowed from the opening of Pope's second Moral Essay: "Who shall decide, when doctors disagree, I And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?" This becomes Chatterton's looser but effective coda: Why then dear Smith since Doctors disagree Their Notions are not Oracles to Me What I think right I ever will pursue And leave you Liberty to do so too. Because Chatterton has paid insufficient attention to the conduct of his argument, "The Defence" is inferior to the "Epistle to Catcott." Nevertheless, the above-all-that-nonsense urbanity is nicely maintained, and the apposite loose­ ness is part of the new Churchillean role. The declaration of freethinking faith quoted among the "credos" at the opening of this chapter is perhaps the best sustained poetry in the piece. The earlier sections rise unevenly to this climax, but the conclusion effectively retires from this high point to the coda. "The Consuliad" is "The Constabiliad" strangely reshaped for London publication—Chatterton's first major appearance in London print. The entire greasy battle has been transferred

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to the national scene. The broad intention is clearly to satirize the quarrel between the Bedford and the court factions in the ministry (see Works, II, 1029-1034). Since this is Chatterton's first lengthy political piece, he chooses targets more charac­ teristic ofjunius than of his own later political satires. He can only have got his details from Bristol political gossip and the Patriot papers, and it was one of these—the Freeholder's Magazine—that promptly accepted the piece. Since Chatterton discards only thirty-eight lines from the 208 of "The Constabiliad," adds only eighty-two, and makes fewer and fewer revisions as "The Consuliad" proceeds, it is probable that the resulting burlesque allegory on the Bedford-Court power struggle is a hoax, that he counted on the happy paranoia of Patriot readers to fill in the details of one of their favorite conspiracies from almost any allegorical text given them. Since Chatterton changes only the first three of the twelve original names, not even bothering to find metrical equivalents that would make the other names more apposite, one could argue that he is intentionally keeping his warriors vague so as to conceal his own political ignorance in January 1770. It should be noted that in Rowley he is vague in this way about the well-documented post-Conquest history of Bristol, though exceedingly detailed about its pre-Conquest history, since the latter was not contradicted by extant evi­ dence. Whatever his intent, "The Constabiliad" is radically changed by the allegorical dimension: the banquet-brawl is now an elaborate metaphor for squabbling over political spoils. The new appeal is to Patriot political voraciousness: the gossip component has achieved a political metamor­ phosis. Of the next three consecutive satires, the first two, "The Whore of Babylon" and "Resignation," culminate the No­ vember 1769-March 1770 thrust for publication, and the closely related third poem, "Kew Gardens," inaugurates the final period of poetic satire, April-June 1770, in which Chatterton found each of the four modes of verse satire—epistle, libretto, topical satire, and mock contention—elaborately and

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peculiarly appropriate to the expression of personal feeling. The three related poems are topical political satires. They re­ turn from the more loose and permissive format of "The Consuliad" (January 1770) to the tighter demands of topical satire, last seen breaking out of its bounds in "The Defence" (December 1769). What has made topical satire once more possible are substantial accessions in Chatterton's knowledge of Patriot political gossip. He has learned enough more of this farrago of fact, rumor, and conspiracy myth to build an ex­ ceedingly complex poem around an essentially simple but strongly organizing idea. When I wrote the Clarendon notes for "The Whore" (Feb­ ruary 1770), I did not see clearly the poetic idea that lies beneath the radically Churchillean style, with its ostenta­ tiously improvisatory air, its highlighting of digression and return therefrom, its abrupt transitions, its rhetorical periods maintained by elaborate paralleling of subordinate units, its coarse and vigorous tone. Yet idea there is, and its scope and wit suggest how much of a pose—a functional pose—the Churchillean disorganization and impetuosity can be. Though it is difficult to get beyond that stance in this obscure and determinedly slapdash poem, "The Whore" is not a ran­ dom political attack. A thesis about government recurs and it selects the elements that shall go into the poem, shaping them to its purposes. The thesis is implied by the title: a new Babylonish religion, a new orthodoxy of corruption and re­ pression has been set up. The Princess Dowager is Whore and high priestess, the Earl of Bute is Baal and Antichrist, and those in the ministry (in both senses) are their tools. The second major target is, therefore, poetically appropri­ ate—the religious establishment and its Bristol cell in particu­ lar, as represented by Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol, and Cutts Barton, Dean of the cathedral. Newton was a notorious preferment seeker and also a defender of govern­ ment policy at a time when it was coming under severe Pa­ triot attack. Also, he had written a well-known commentary on Revelation—the source of Chatterton's title. With these

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two targets and this shaping thesis in mind, we can see clearly that the poem is organized perhaps as tightly as the Churchillean style permits and that even though the subtitle is "Book the 1st" this first book is an artistic whole. Chatterton invokes Newton as the appropriate muse for this "mysterious" poem, this Revelation of a new politicalreligious faith (11. 1-22). The new orthodoxy demands credu­ lity and mindless assent (11. 23-110). Its history is the history of Bute's rise to power through the Princess Dowager's lust (11. 111-222). The faith required of adherents is ludicrously com­ pared to the credulity of those who subscribe to Newton's Analysis of the Revelation (11. 223-260) and those who dissent, either from the religious or the political orthodoxy, are se­ verely punished (11. 261-288). Johnson's False Alarm is the most recent and successful apology for the new orthodoxy (11. 280-356). Lord North, the new prime minister, is merely a tool of Bute and the princess (11. 357-458). In spite of all this, the brave satirist will not be silenced: further attacks in subse­ quent books of the poem are promised, probable targets are listed (11. 459-476). Such enumerative summaries are, I be­ lieve, often necessary with Chatterton's Churchillean satires, for the strange arguments have their appropriate structures, though they are not always readily apparent. Into this strong overall structure the satirist insistently in­ trudes, nearly always protesting the impetuosity, bravery, and spontaneity of his righteous anger. There is a two-way pull, then, between elaborate shaping metaphor, with its ar­ gument, and satiric stance. Chatterton's tone toward Newton in the introduction, for example, is one of calculated inso­ lence, heightened by a reversal of Dryden's famous simile: Come then my Newton leave the musty Lines Where Revelations farthing Candle shines In search of hidden Truths let others go Be Thou the Fiddle to my Puppet Show. He addresses his Patriot readers directly. An aside taunts ministerial barristers seeking actionable libels. He insultingly

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apologizes for puns. He quarrels with himself, urging himself on to lash North regardless of consequences. The whole last section is a dialogue between the impetuous satirist and an anxious Bristolian urging prudence. The cautioner's advice is summarized for ten lines, then given (with one pronoun slip) in direct quotation for fifty-two. This allows Chatterton's fiery declaration of satiric independence that concludes the poem. Damn'd narrow Notions! tending to disgrace The boasted Reason of the Human Race Bristol may keep her prudent Maxims still But know my saving Friends I never will The Composition of my Soul is made Too great for Servile avaricious Trade: When raving in the Lunacy of Ink I catch the Pen and Publish what I think. He shall freely attack North, the king, Mansfield, Norton, Barton, even Bristol pederasts. Here he summons "the fair" to defend his "natural" libertinism and his satire on a topic he seems to have inherited from Savage and Churchill; at any rate the attack on pederasty is not satisfactorily connected to the poem. He concludes by promising satire in future books on seven political figures. The character that has emerged owes much to Churchill. The satirist is a scornfully hetero­ sexual libertine, an honest noter of flaws, a freethinker, a man who refuses to be prudent, a man who insists on loudly de­ nouncing corruption whatever the consequence. Because the poem keeps this angry satirist near the center of attention throughout, the first book can effectively climax in this debate. The twin attack on religious and political establishments, then, is united by the emphasis on the satirist and by the gov­ erning thesis concerning the new orthodoxy. The poem is an angry moral argument shaped as the imitation of the move­ ment of connected wrongs through the witty, scornful mind of the satirist. Chatterton could have written further books on

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the same principle, for any political or religious target would do so long as it could be connected to the broad thesis and could keep the satirist and his anger in view. The more mis­ cellaneous the attack the better; this enables his associative wit freer play. Chatterton did not submit "The Whore" to any periodical, deciding rather to use almost the whole of it in "Kew Gar­ dens." It is a strong poem, but it is easy to miss the shaping argument. Not only is it camouflaged by the insistent pres­ ence of the satirist: the medium itself is a problem. The cou­ plets are often quite closely argued and thick with political and scriptural allusion. Unless these allusions are caught, the argument is lost. On the other hand, once the idea is grasped, one might expect just such allusions and find them strongly supportive of both halves of the thesis. In the introduction, for example, the governing idea is advanced with particularly heavy scriptural allusion. The new golden-calf orthodoxy promulgated by Aaron while Moses was on the mount under­ lies all of the poet's first pithy statement of his thesis of a new "Ministerial Creed" and the golden basis of its power to con­ vert. The passage immediately following (11. 35-50) is likewise based on scripture—I Cor. 13:2 ("though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains") and Heb. 11:1-2 ("Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good re­ port"). Here Chatterton argues—with specific allusion to the expulsion of Wilkes and the seating of Colonel Luttrell after the election Wilkes had carried 1143 to 296—the sort of faith demanded by the ministry and enforced by its Inquisition; this is how the elders of the new faith gained a good report from Newton and from Mansfield, who defended the action of the Commons before the Lords. The argument is tight and highly allusive. A bit later the faith motif is resumed to satirize Bristol's worship of Trade and her M.P., Clare (11. 65-70). The Hebrews' passage is again called upon, together with the plague of darkness of Exod. 10:21-22, in order to attack the

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resignation of Grafton and the new ministry assembled under North (11. 81-86). The first section concludes (11. 101-110) with an attack on Bute, negotiator of the Peace of Paris, by an allusion to the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God" (Matt. 5:9). This witty combining of scripture and politics certainly supports the shaping thesis, but its very thickness makes the poem difficult. I have quoted only scraps from the rich, coarse texture of "The Whore." A slightly longer passage will suggest the sort of thing that can be found throughout. The total attack on Johnson, though full of vigor, is much too long to give in full, but one bit in which Johnson's False Alarm is seen as beer soured to vinegar and as the last sign of life in a literary corpse is characteristic. As Beer to ev'ry drinking purpose dead Is to a wond'rous Metamorphose led And opend to the Action of the Winds In Vinegar a Resurrection finds His Genius dead, and decently interr'd The clam'rous Noise of Duns sonorous heard Sour'd into Life assum'd the heavy Pen And saw Existence for an Hour again Scatter'd his Thoughts spontaneous from his Brain And prov'd we had no reason to complain Whilst from his Fancy figures budded out As hair on humid Carcasses will sprout. IfI have overpraised "The Whore" my excuse must be that the imaginative, almost "metaphysical" governing idea, the pull between that idea and the powerful presence of the satirist, and the thick supporting texture have been hitherto ignored. Meyerstein and the earlier critics have been correct in tracing style and topics to Churchill, but for bringing this style and these topics under the powerful organizing idea of seeing the government policies as a new faith Chatterton de­ serves praise he has not hitherto received.

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In the next two topical satires—"Resignation" and "Kew Gardens"—there is perceptible and explicable decline in po­ etic force. "Resignation" (February and early March 1770) is, with the exception of two quite excerptable passages, overly neat and satirically limp. It has a simple subject—the standard Patriot assessment of ministerial corruption from Bute through North. The Churchillean satirist has receded from cosubject to means. Coherence is achieved by a symmetrical chronological organization, but vigor is only intermittently attained. Grafton's resignation is the focal point of the satire: it precisely marks the halfway point of the poem. Before it, two sections concentrate on Grafton; after it, two concentrate on the situation facing his successor North. Also, further symmetries abound within these four sections. The major weaknesses of the poem are this organizational predictability, the tedium of much of the denunciation that predominates, and the lack of imaginative complication. These weaknesses largely disappear for 320 consecutive lines (77-396) on the rise of Bute and the nature and extent of his power, lines that match the poetic force of "The Whore" because ideas of real structural power bring them poetically alive. The first 190 lines of the strong passage are a coarsely comic narrative of Bute's rise. In the last 130 lines a Copernican metaphor imaginatively conveys the nature of Bute's continu­ ing dominance. Since this metaphor is compatible with the total argument of the poem, its extension to a total framing device analogous to the new orthodoxy idea in "The Whore" could have given "Resignation" something of that poem's strength. It is probable, however, that "Resignation" is too long to be governed by a single metaphor—probably, in fact, just too long. The paring of all materials not compatible with the metaphor would strengthen the poem and the rise narra­ tive might have been subordinated fairly simply to this larger idea, domesticating that section to the poem's structure rather than leaving it what it now is—a strong but quite detachable passage. Yet the whole solution here proposed would have lessened the importance of Grafton's resignation, and the

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timeliness of the poem probably made it publishable in Freeholder's. The comic rise narrative begins with a barren Scots land­ scape (the scenery strongly influenced by Churchill's Prophecy of Famine) from which Bute departs for London, where he immediately conquers—in the style of Humphry Clinker— the Princess Dowager and, consequently, England: "The lit­ tle Urchin chose a piercing dart / And from his naked but­ tocks gored her heart." The mingling of comic sex, the folklore of witchcraft, and the symbolic trappings of political power make for a strong satiric narrative—see especially lines 158-200. Chatterton moves smoothly from this narrative into the Copernican metaphor. Bute is the sun; Holland, Grafton, and the others are his planets. Holland seemed great but Your destin'd Sphere of Ministry now run You drop'd like others in the Parent Sun: There as a Spot you Purpose to remain And seek Protection in the Sybil's Swain. Grafton is a wandering, unpredictable planet. His incompe­ tence necessitates the appointment of subordinates who can correct his course: they . . . after proper Adoration paid Were to their destind Sphere of State conveyd To shine the Minister's Satellites Collect his light and give his Lordship Ease Reform his crooked Politics and draw A more secure Attack upon the Law Settle his erring Revolutions right And give in just proportion day and Night. Unfortunately, even these 320 lines are diluted with reitera­ tive passages of denunciation, sometimes lively enough in brief touches but not heightened by the power of either the comic view or the grandiose astronomical metaphor. Chatterton needed something beyond the "abuse and scurrility" of "the language of party" to bring out the poet in him. The lack

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of an overall informing concept and the flatness of texture se­ verely weaken "Resignation." In its overall tedium the poem is following Churchill at his hectoring worst, whereas "The Whore" built from the possibilities of Churchill's best. Flamboyant Insult and Anxious Revenge "Kew Gardens," the last of the long topical satires, is also the first of four intensely personal satires of April-June 1770. "Kew Gardens," Chatterton's "Will," "The Exhibition," and "The Revenge" exploit each of the four modes of verse satire whose development we have been tracing. Together they constitute an elaborate farewell to Bristol, though "The Re­ venge," as I shall argue, is not consciously personal. The first two are written in April in anticipation of leaving his native city; the last two look back on Bristol, in May and June, from the not-very-disinterested perspective afforded by London. "Kew Gardens" builds from "The Whore"; except for /Ella it is the poet's longest work and it is also one of the most puz­ zling. To make literary and biographical sense of it we must deal with the ambivalent intentions of the text in the light of the somewhat clearer circumstantial evidence, and this in­ volves, first of all, getting the motley contents sorted. The summary that follows is intended to show, not the structure, but the topical order within each of the three parts as they were sent up to London in sequence to Edmunds, editor of the Middlesex Journal. It is quite possible that Chatterton's view of the poem changed as he wrote it. The first part (11. 1-262) went to Edmunds on 19 March. It begins with an apostrophe to Kew as a standard subject for contemporary poetry and as "The Temple of the Idol of the Great I Sacred to Council-Mysterys of State." This couplet links this first part with the political religion theme of "The Whore," which poem, almost entire, will conclude "Kew Gardens." The theme recurs frequently enough in this first part to tie together the many attacks on national figures thought to be under the influence of Bute and the Princess

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Dowager, Goddess of Kew. A transition to Bristol targets is rather tenuously made by an attack on Henry Jones, the "Bricklayer Poet," who had praised both Kew Gardens and Bristol in separate poems in 1767. Once this transition is made, Bristol targets follow with no attempt to connect them with the national theme through anything but the poet's anger. The attack on Broderip's organ-playing style and the contrasting praise of Allen seem particularly out of place, and the lengthy dedication to Burgum has no possible national significance or connection. The second part (11. 263-480) went to Edmunds nine days later. It is the most miscellaneous part of the poem, even though a running motif, Inspiration, pretends to connect the targets and also relates loosely to the thesis of political or­ thodoxy toward which Chatterton may now be more calculatedly moving. The confusion lies in the welter of targets attacked under Inspiration's standard. All are either national figures or Bristolians, but nothing unites them except the satirist's quite arbitrary wish to view them ironically as in­ stances of inspiration. The third part (11. 481-1094) was apparently written before 14 April and, since 546 of its lines are taken from "The Whore" (536 lines) and two other poems, it could well have gone to Edmunds within a few days of the second part. The sections taken directly from "The Whore" have the coherence of the tension between thesis and satirist already noted in that poem. The extensive additions and less extensive cuts from the earlier poem, all occuring at the beginning and end, not only provide transition from the second part and a conclusion more appropriate to the new poem; they also serve to play up the potential of the earlier poem for including Bristolians in its attack. It is not at all certain that these changes work any improvement on "The Whore," but they certainly help to make that text something more of a piece with the 480 lines of national-Bristol satire that precede them in the new poem. The main change is that one element in "The Whore" that al­ lowed the introduction of Bristol material—the lengthy

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speech of the prudent Bristol adviser—has been expanded to include more such advice, thus making the total 1094 lines of "Kew Gardens" more persistently Bristolian in subject than was "The Whore." It is the emphasis on the Churchillean satiric stance, the scorn for caution, that has allowed this. Allowed it, yes, but does this make "Kew Gardens" a co­ herent poem? There is, overall, the cohesive presence of the angry satirist and there is, for the national targets, the thesis of a political religion that controls the last third fairly closely and is more loosely operative through the ideas of Kew as temple and the princess as goddess in the first part and through the mock treatment of Inspiration in the second. The problem lies with the Bristol targets in all three parts. All they have in common with the rest of the poem is their eliciting Chatterton's ire. Without them one could argue for the loose sort of unity characteristic of Churchill, though not for the strong, subtle unity of "The Whore." To get at this problem of intrusive Bristol material it is necessary to study the circumstances of the poem more closely. In "The Consuliad" and "Resignation" we have seen Chatterton's success at publishing reworked Bristol mate­ rials. In February, he writes "The Whore," which has both national and Bristol targets, but does not submit it for publi­ cation. Sometime during March and early April he writes "Kew Gardens" and sends it to Middlesex Journal in sections as it is written, quite confident, apparently, that it will be printed. The "Will" (14 April) twice suggests that the poem's appearance is a certainty and also makes it clear that Chatterton expected it to cause a sensation in Bristol—as well it might had it been published. Ifhe could publish political satire at will in Londonjournals and if, on the evidence of "The Consuliad," Bristol material could be easily adapted to such satire, why not publish na­ tionally something that would not only settle Bristol scores in a massive way but also thereby convince his master John Lambert that the poet could be nothing but a nuisance if held to his apprenticeship? Frequent suicide threats to Lambert's

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servants and others had not done the trick (Life, pp. 332-336); surely "Kew Gardens" would set him at liberty to conquer London as a major Patriot writer. However good "The Whore" might be, Chatterton, using and extending its methods of combining national and Bristol targets, could use "Kew Gardens" to attack nearly forty prominent Bristolians by name. It should be noted that though he has here attacked almost everyone in sight, he has spared any who might still be of service—Barrett, George Catcott, Burgum, Lambert, Michael Clayfield, for example. The drop in poetic coherence from "The Whore" may have seemed a small price for the personal enlargement that "Kew Gardens" promised and for the paying-off of grudges that it achieved. This, at any rate, is the best suggestion I can make about the circumstantial his­ tory of the poem. "Kew Gardens" is, then, a miscellaneous attack on the na­ tional political establishment as the Patriots saw it and on some forty Bristolians Chatterton particularly wished to of­ fend. It is not intended to be persuasive. The welter of subject would be partly handled by the thesis of a political religion and might even be thought to enhance the slapdash Churchillean manner. "Kew Gardens" is, in fact, a rather elaborately "literary" poem: there is a steady use or burlesque of such literary conventions as apostrophe, tableau vivant, character, dedication, invocation, and the Pope-Churchill tradition of the debate between prudence and satiric honesty. We may be put off by the seriousness with which Chatterton (like Churchill) takes his anger and by his constant pose of im­ provisatory bravado. Note, however, that this is the satirical counterpart of the seriousness with which the meditative poet asks to be taken in "The Deserted Village," "The Task," "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," Collins's odes, and The Prelude, In all of these the poet or some surrogate, his problems, his development, his temperament have become an accepted part of the subject matter of poetry. Chatterton is writing toward the start of this movement. The path that Churchill marked out and in which Chatterton followed was

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used by Byron. In fact it makes some sense to read "Kew Gardens" as an inferior, pellmell, satiric rather than medita­ tive Prelude, written in somewhat callow haste rather than in brooding tranquility, gobbling up chunks of four earlier sat­ ires (see the chart, p. 186), summing up grievances against, rather than lessons learned from his native ground, but never­ theless closely connected with the satiric poet Chatterton felt he had become. I hope that this method of explaining the peculiarities of "Kew Gardens" has established its claim to be considered as not only the last of the lengthy political verse satires,19 but also the first of the four personal satires I have posited. It is most intimately connected with the second of them—his "Will" (14 April). This puzzling work is untitled in his manu­ script, but it has usually been discussed as some sort of actual will. It is the most elaborate satirical stew Chatterton ever concocted: an epistle to his Bristol patrons and a mock will, these two preceded by a superscript contradicting their tone and a highly ambivalent prefatory note and followed by an ambivalent codicil. If either epistle proper or mock will be taken to be central, a good deal of the total force is lost. That force is best grasped if the whole is taken as a farewell epistle in prose and verse to Bristol from a poet who claims to be on the verge of suicide. Once this is at least tentatively assumed, the purposes of the five sections and the ways they interact can be more easily grasped. By concluding the satirical epistle proper with a suicide threat, Chatterton gives a particular force to what he has had to say to each patron. He sums up the inadequacies of his rela­ tionship with each, and with each there is an emphasis on money—indeed, this is the most persistent note in the total document. Henry Burgum is addressed first: some monetary offense by him would seem to have catalyzed the whole piece (Life, p. 337). Burgum is reproached for tightfistedness about the elaborate pedigree Chatterton worked up for him in the "Account of the De Berghams" and for his failure, in spite of promises, either to pay for or to make an unsecured loan as

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payment for Chatterton's poetic tributes in "Journal 6th" and "Epistle to Catcott." So much for the sincerity of those trib­ utes. The prefatory note suggests that money difficulties that Burgum could have alleviated have forced Chatterton to abandon an odd scheme to set up as "an Enthousiastic Methodist" poet or even preacher. The poet next turns to George Catcott. Catcott's heart is good, but his orthodox prejudices and his temperament have made close friendship impossible. Whatever money he may have lent or given, Rowley has repaid. Here the poet di­ gresses to denounce Rowley as his "first chief Curse," raising impossible hopes: For had I never known the antique Lore I ne'er had ventur'd from my peaceful Shore To be the wreck of promises and hopes A Boy of Learning and a Bard of Tropes But happy in my humbler Sphere had mov'd Untroubled unrespected unbelov'd. Next Barrett is thanked for the knowledge he imparted; un­ fortunately Bristol was no marketplace for such knowledge. Barrett was right to advise Chatterton against writing (satiri­ cal?) verse. "But twas ordain'd by Fate that I should write." This is close to Pope's mock lament in his "Epistle to Arbuthnot": "Why did I write? what sin to me unknown I Dipp'd me in ink, my parents', or my own?" Bristol's mayor Thomas Harris shall soon feel the sting of Chatterton's satire and will consequently see that the poet is declared a suicide. This threat to Harris and the suicide threat it contains close the satiric epistle section on a scornfully angry note: "Spite of the Prudence of this prudent Place I I wrote my Mind nor hid the Authors face I . . . Poor supersti­ tious Mortals! wreak your hate! I Upon my cold remains." The satiric epistle, then, seems to be written in bitter ear­ nest, an honest summing-up before death of the inadequacies of his patrons. The comedy within it is scornful, not playful:

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Well Burgum take the Laurel to thy brow With a rich saddle decorate a Sow Strut in Iambics totter in an Ode Promise and never pay and be the Mode. . . . But what was Knowledge: could it here succeed When hardly twenty in the Town can read The will proper begins with a scornful tease at Bristol's ex­ pense. This is the last Will and Testament of me Thomas Chatterton of the City of Bristol being sound in Body or it is the Fault of my last Surgeon [a suggestion of vene­ real disease]. The Soundness of my Mind the Coroner andjury are to be judges of—desiring them to take notice that the most perfect Masters of Human Nature in Bris­ tol, distinguish me by the Title of the Mad Genius there­ fore if I do a mad action it is conformable to every Ac­ tion of my Life which all savored of Insanity— The issue here is how he is to be buried; the effect will be to make the reader question the sanity of the whole document. The first "bequest" consists of detailed instructions for erecting an outrageously elaborate and ostentatious monu­ ment "over my Body to the Height of 4 feet 5 Inches" (prob­ ably an allusion to the notorious No. 45 of Wilkes' North Briton). Six tablets are to be affixed—one, in Norman French "engraven in old English Characters" to a thirteenth-century ancestor; another in Latin and again in Old English characters to fifteenth-century ancestors; one, to his father, connecting the family closely with the cathedral and RedclifFChurch; and one to himself: "On the fourth Tablet in Roman Charac­ ters I To the Memory of Thomas Chatterton. Reader—-judge not: if thou art a Christian, believe that he shall be Judged by a Superior Power; to that Power only is he now answerable—" The fifth and sixth tablets are to display family arms invented by the poet. The instructions for defraying the cost of this

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monument are equally elaborate and outrageous. If the Redcliff churchwardens refuse to pay, the Patriot Society for the Supporters of the Bill of Rights are to be applied to, presum­ ably because of Chatterton's services to their cause. If the churchwardens agree to pay, "I will and direct that the Sec­ ond Edition of my Kew Gardens shall be dedicated to them in the following Dedication—To Paul Farr and John Flower Esqrs. this Book is most humbly dedicated by the Author's Ghost—" Thus far the will has been comically elaborate and brassy. At this point it turns into a sort of mock will, a fairly com­ mon subliterary genre in eighteenth-century periodicals. Comic, satiric, ironic, and serious bequests are made to Chat­ terton's friends, enemies, and acquaintances—sometimes to whole groups. The impact of bequests in a mock will is that one reveals hitherto concealed estimates of associates, espe­ cially about their vulnerabilities. When to this satiric vector are added the seriousness of some bequests, the ambivalence of others, and the suicide threat, the total impact becomes very complex. If Chatterton had committed suicide and if, as the codicil directs, the "Will" had been published the follow­ ing Saturday in Felix Farley'sJournal , there would have been a mighty stir in Bristol. He did not commit suicide, however, at this time (nor, perhaps, when he died); we shall see that he had no such intention when he wrote this "Will," so I am in­ clined to read the codicil as Meyerstein suggests (Life, p. 344): "He wanted to make a stir in the world, and imagined, no doubt, at the moment of writing, the consternation of his na­ tive place at seeing (whenever he died) the will printed." There is also, however, a bit of blackmail in the codicil—if I don't get what I want, all of this will out. We must now double these complexities of tone and intent because of the ambivalence of the prefatory note to the whole piece. Nota Bene In a dispute concerning the Character of David it was ar­ gued that he must be a holy Man from the Strains of Piety that breathes thro' his whole works. Being of a

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contrary Opinion and knowing that a Great Genius can affect every thing—endeavoring in the foregoing Poems [not identified] to represent an Enthousiastic Methodist intended to send it to Romaine [a popular Methodist preacher] and impose it upon the infatuated World as a Reality but thanks to Mr. Burgum's Generosity I am now employ'd in matters of more Importance. With this as preface, are we to take the "Will" itself and the suicide threat as further proof "that a Great Genius can affect every thing," as no more sincere than the Methodist project? Yet the seriousness of much of the "Will" can hardly be doubted. Nor is this all. After writing everything so far dis­ cussed, Chatterton added this superscript: "All this wrote bet 11 and 2 oClock Saturday in the utmost Distress of Mind." Is the intent of this to further perplex the reader or to counter the elements of tease, comedy, and satire in the tone? At this point we must realize, to make sense of the whole, that the "Will" has two quite distinct functions that, neverthe­ less, have no quarrel with each other. The practical function is, as Meyerstein argues (Life, pp. 334-337), to free Chatterton from his apprenticeship. Whether John Lambert found the poet alarmingly mad or merely an intolerable nuisance, this goal was achieved: Chatterton was immediately dis­ missed. The larger purpose, however, is to express his com­ plex attitudes toward his city and all he knew there in a way that would force their puzzled attention and inquiry. This, I take it, is the function of the teasing ambivalence of the piece. The whole, then, to go back to my original proposal, is a satiric epistle in mixed media addressed to Bristol and Bristolians and giving provocative expression to his exceedingly complex feelings toward it and them. His money worries and his wish to be freed of his apprenticeship are the immediate occasions. I would argue that however ambivalent or con­ tradictory we find it, it hangs beautifully together as Ianx satura because of the consistently teasing stance Chatterton maintains throughout—the vexing, comic, satiric, distracted, intensely feeling "Mad Genius."

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If I am right in arguing that the piece as a whole is a satiric epistle, we must recognize that the poet has moved far from the comparatively straightforward freethinking satire of the "Epistle to Catcott" and "The Defence." The freethinking is still there, but it is only one among many motifs. Ifhe needed models for the "Will" Chatterton did not go this time to Pope. The provocative ambivalence is closer to Swift; the mock-will format Chatterton would have seen frequently in the periodicals; the laying-one's-cards-on-the-table stance of the internal verse epistle is closer to Churchill than to Pope. "The Exhibition: A Personal Satire" is an altogether colder, more scornful message to Bristol. Written a week after Chatterton reached London, it is an uneven poem, full of strong satire but breaking from its broad organizational pattern— teasing introduction (11. 1-196); the occasion (11. 197-232); the medical mock contention proper (11. 233-444)—whenever targets of opportunity occur to Chatterton's anger. The poem is subscribed, again, "End of Book the first." Though there is no evidence that more was written, more might have been planned, thus clearing up some of the anomalies. From the subtitle on Chatterton departs from the usual (though infrequently observed) rationale for satire in his time, that vices and follies rather than persons are being attacked. For me, at least half of the poem's 444 lines are strong satire—ludicrous, spiteful, verging on rant, even mean—but nevertheless slashing to good effect at the volatile prurience of a Bristol blind to the officious vice and folly of the medical and clerical pillars of its civic morality. Not that the victim of this civic hypocrisy, the furtive clerical exhibitionist, is treated with sympathy: Delia the young, saw mighty stand His Sacerdotal Truncheon in his Hand; Which as he whiskd about from Side to Side In the exulting of a decent Pride, Byjust Degrees to greater Glorys spread And the bright Jewel glow'd a stronger red.

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Why modest didst Thou creep away To hide thy beauties from the glare of Day Merit like Thine, so thick, so very long Iflost or hid, it does the Public wrong. Into the simple overall organization are introduced lengthy irrelevancies, often effective poetry in themselves, but breaking up the larger satirical impact. There are digressions on artists and musicians, a sexual history of Alexander Catcott, attacks on clerics and doctors quite unconnected to the occasion or the mock contention. What longer poem might Chatterton have envisioned that could make the digressions relevant? If the scandal were actual, there would certainly have been a clerical hearing, which second mock contention might then have been the subject of the second book. Yet if that was the plan, the digressive clerical attacks ought to have been omit­ ted from the first book so that the clergymen could have ex­ posed themselves in the context of their own hearing. I con­ clude that Chatterton had a scandalous topic for a satire that any Bristolian would be eager to read. Since the offender was a cleric, attacks of all sorts on other clerics would have a tenu­ ous connection with the subject. Following books would carry the history of subsequent developments of the scandal. If this guess be sound, what mars the poem is its opportunism: a mock contention will handle a great variety of matter, but it can only strike targets that can be included in the contention proper or its necessary preliminaries. Ajoint medical-clerical hearing or an attack by the doctors themselves on the clerics as a means for palliating the exhibitionist's crime—either strategy might have done the trick with some unity of effect. For all of these problems, three passages ought to be singled out for their poetical effectiveness: Catcott's sexual history, sketched in the geological jargon of his own treatise (11. 2756); the medical attack on exhibitionism as a threat to the prosperity of doctors—presumably obstetricians and ve­ nereologists (11. 245-270); the lagging historian Barrett's sur­ vey of the cultural progress of Bristol (11. 325-356), where once "The homebred Documents of old Sam Pye, I Were

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standing Rules to dress their Buboes by." All in all we can only regret that the gross satiric energy of "The Exhibition" did not subsume a little more structural finesse. However strong we find individual passages, the poem is shaped finally by opportunism rather than by art. Churchill's artistically licentious example was a very mixed blessing. It freed a pow­ erful vein of anger and ridicule in Chatterton, but it also seems too often to have absolved him of anything but a per­ functory recognition of those constructional arts that can transform strong poetry into strong poems. The last of the personal verse satires, "The Revenge" (June 1770), returns to the burletta style and to much of the text of "Amphitryon," written at the very beginning of the nonRowleyan satiric phase. Circumstances have suddenly made a return to this mode, which flowed so congenially from his pen, a practical route toward fame and money. "The Re­ venge" is, I strongly believe, an intimately personal poem, but in order to see that we must first consider it artistically. In the letter to his mother of 14 May he gives an exuberant account of how the new market had opened for him. Last week being in the pit of Drury-Lane Theatre, I con­ tracted an immediate acquaintance . . . with a young gentleman in Cheapside; partner in a music shop, the greatest in the city. Hearing I could write, he desired me to write a few songs for him: this I did the same night, and conveyed them to him the next morning. These he showed to a doctor in music, and I am invited to treat with this doctor, on the footing of a composer, for Ranelagh and the gardens. Bravo, hey boys, up we go]— Besides the advantage of visiting these expensive and po­ lite places, gratis; my vanity will be fed with the sight of my name in copper-plate, and my sister will receive a bundle of printed songs, the words by her brother. By 6 July Chatterton had sold his 576-line burletta "The Revenge" and its six additional songs to Luifman Atterbury,

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joint proprietor of Marybone Gardens, for five guineas. We do not know that the piece was acted that summer, though his letter to Cary of 1 July suggests it. The title page of the anonymous London 1795 separate publication (twenty-five years after the poet's death) also asserts 1770 performance, and Chatterton's dramatis personae assigns parts to members of the Marybone company. Music for the burletta has, how­ ever, never been found, and there is no other record that it was actually performed (see Life, pp. 397-398). The plot of "The Revenge" is tight and symmetrical. All scenes are essential. The burlesque style strongly determines how the plot shall be taken and gives the whole action a didac­ tic tendency. The burletta is, then, a low burlesque action in which love, thwarted and flouted in Jupiter, Juno, and Bac­ chus, seeks three devious routes to consummation, all of which lead inevitably to a single farcical discovery scene and reconciliations all around. The two-act, twelve-scene action falls into four major episodes. In a separating action between Jupiter and Juno in the first three scenes they quarrel comically—Jupiter as a wife-hating, middle-aged playboy who has just made an assignation with Maia; Juno as liberty-loving scold. When he angrily turns on her nagging, her unexpected amorous compliance proves even more disquieting than her shrewishness and he flees in perplexity. In the rest of the first act, Cupid sets up the impending complications. In revenge for a passing thunderbolt from angryjove, he tells Juno ofjupiter's assignation and the two of them plan that Juno shall steal into Maia's bed. Here the ac­ tion seems to pause for a lively debate between Cupid and Bacchus on love and wine. At first Bacchus gets the better of it. However, the tempo quickens into a rapid-fire scolding match that Bacchus wins only by emptying his bowl in Cupid's face and running off. Cupid vows his second revenge—to inflict a "dry," hopeless love on Bacchus. In the first four scenes of the second act, Cupid's revenges reach their predictable complications. Bacchus, finding no

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comfort in wine or music, realizes what Cupid has done and decides to seek out Maia after drinking one more bowl. Yet Juno has already taken Maia's place and is impatiently an­ ticipating Jupiter's arrival. Bacchus decides, for safety, to pre­ tend he is Jupiter, and so the two, mutually deceived, meet and are about to flee to mutual delights in the Paphian grove. At this point Jupiter arrives, quarrels with Bacchus, and calls for sudden morning; the scene ends in violent recriminations all around. All is, of course, righted and explained by Cupid in the last scene— after he has insisted on his power over "Mortals and Immortals." Juno and Jupiter are at least temporarily recon­ ciled; so are Bacchus and Cupid. The four turn to the audi­ ence and shift with odd abruptness from the low burlesque style that has been so consistently maintained to the presumed polite tone of the Marybone audience. The plot is neat, musical in its symmetries, but quite pre­ dictable. The audience's laughter would come from this very predictability, but perhaps even more from the low language and behavior of these mythological personages. The clarity of the action allows one's attention to savor the slangy contem­ porary treatment to the full. This effect is heightened by the persistent use of two related tricks—allusions to the gardens and the theater and to contemporary scandal and politics. Ju­ piter refers, for example, to the theater's thunder machine. Cupid gets in an allusion to the illiterate spelling of the Duke's letters in the Cumberland-Grosvenor adultery case and to the roasting the Duke's tutor was consequently receiving. Juno turns Patriot in her own defense. The effect of such allusions is to set up comic echoes between ordinary present and myth­ ological past; it is the topical equivalent of the slangy contem­ porary diction. The prosody descends intact from "Amphi­ tryon" and the Whitefield ode. It is sure and comically varied, nicely suited both for musical setting and for the exuberantly coarse comedy at which burletta drives. Rossetti ranked "The Revenge" among Chatterton's "Per­ fect specimens" in the non-Rowleyan works. Because its spir-

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ited, steady coarseness is probably merely tedious to some, I am glad of his support. For me, the balance between lofty subject and low treatment is maintained: Chatterton has found and kept the necessary decorum of low burlesque.20 Something further must be said of the plot. In Works (II, 1106-1107) I have detailed the intricate parallels with the plot of Allla. I believe these parallels are quite unconscious on Chatterton's part and that they have considerable psychologi­ cal significance. Note especially that the interrupted scene of illicit love is a favorite with him. Besides Ailla and "The Re­ venge," it occurs in "The Romaunte of the Cnyghte," the burlesque modernization of that poem, and, as we shall see, in "Memoirs of a Sad Dog." The discovered illicit male lovers—Celmonde, Bacchus, the "Cnyghte uncourteous," the "ruffian knight," and the Sad Dog—are all, I believe, sur­ rogates for the jealous son Thomas Chatterton. In the tragic versions his rivalry with the paternal imago is punished by death, followed in each case by the woman's forgiveness. In the comic versions the damsel says, "May all thy Sins from Heaven forgiveness find." Bacchus is forgiven and Juno and Jupiter reconciled; and the Sad Dog, having cuckolded an al­ derman and having been discovered in flagrante delicto, is merely forced to pay the alderman £2000. The Sad Dog meanly revenges himself by seducing the alderman's daugh­ ter, then casting her off. There is a hint here of Chatterton's dealings—whether in reality or fantasy—with the Bristol girls he pursued and a hint also of his probable motivation for his rakish stance. What I am arguing is that in all of these recur­ ring situations Chatterton may be working out the guilt of his subconscious feelings about his mother and father. In tragic versions, the protagonist pays for his illicit longings and his rivalry with death. In the comic versions, the guilty act is prevented or punished in a more light-hearted, less final man­ ner. In the tragic versions the illicit lover's character is con­ spiratorial and proud; in the comic versions the evil he would do is tempered by our seeing him as more mischievous than sinful. Even when he does the deed, as the Sad Dog, the con-

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sequences are tolerable. It may be significant, then, that Chatterton used much of his five guineas for "The Revenge" to buy expensive gifts for his mother and sister (see Works, I,

648-649). With "The Revenge" the motley fireworks of Chatterton's year and a half as verse satirist conclude. We have now to con­ sider lesser, though still predominantly satiric works of the same period—pieces in prose and verse dealing in one way or another with love, and satiric journalism. Nearly all of the remaining pieces to be dealt with in this chapter grow from the freethinking and Patriot stances already sketched out. The achievements are, with some few rather startling exceptions, less substantial and less indicative of strong, somewhat coher­ ent lines of development. They are more peripheral to Chat­ terton's total development, but they cast interesting sidelights on his central artistic course. FREETHINKING AND LOVE Until Chatterton becomes a freethinker, his love poetry, though showing occasional sparks of artistic effectiveness, is by and large worthless. The bulk of the pieces is hackwork done to order for his friend John Baker. When we compare this work to the freethinking, libertine poems discussing or expressing love, we have dramatic evidence of how the new stance has vitalized a body of static, unexpressive amatory convention. Most of the limp love poems fall within a mode that may be defined as praise through wit. There seem to be three basic ways of praising in a poem: evoking the subject in such a way as to express admiration; imitating one's own ap­ parently spontaneous admiring response; or presenting the more elaborate and ambiguous response of mental play of some sort (wit, argument, and so on) elicited by the subject and redounding, therefore, to the credit of both subject and poet. The third response is ambiguous because it is difficult to be sure which is on display—the poet's powers or the subject

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capable of eliciting them. Of the poems of praise considered thus far, "On the Last Epiphany" and the songs to Ella, St. Baldwin, and Richard I are of the first sort, concentrating at­ tention on the admirable subject. The descriptive poems to be considered in the next chapter will attempt to suggest spon­ taneous response. The 1764 "Hymn for Christmas Day," with its argument about the problem of praising God, and "The Resignation," with its internal argument between the­ ology and affliction, were of the arguing or witty persuasion. To step outside the Chatterton canon, we might note that the heroic ode is usually of the first sort, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century love and nature poetry of the second, and Elizabethan and metaphysical love poetry of the third. In the eighteenth century, however, the wit lyric of the seventeenth century was very often—with such notable exceptions as those of Prior and Gay—watered down to insipidity and rote gesture. Attacks on metaphysical extravagance such as those by Pope in "An Essay on Criticism," by Addison in his essays on false and true wit, and by Johnson in his life of Cowley, while justified as trenchant anatomies of the absurdities of minor wit poetry, seem also to urge a caution that in poetry often resulted in an emasculated play of wit even less interest­ ing than the earlier extravagances. Chatterton, at any rate, when this sort of occasional verse is called for, does not rise above the entrenched and automatic response until freethinking and libertine views revitalize the conventions, and then, though many of the conventions are retained, he shifts from lyric to epistolary mode. He wrote, after the two early hymns, twenty-three poems of this praise-by-wit sort, and one finds in them almost as many structural patterns as poems, but most are so per­ functory as to require no consideration. The ten written for John Baker (to Eleanor Hoyland and to Sally Clarke) are, aside from occasional effective touches, of purely biographical interest. They suggest that Chatterton was willing to endure tedium for his friend Baker without crediting either Baker or his two goddesses with much taste or sense. We may let "To

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Miss Hoyland I" (1768) epitomize the thoroughgoing insipid­ ity and tedious extravagance of these early love poems, for in it the question of whether Chatterton could turn out this sort of nonsense without tongue in cheek presses upon us. Nature, we learn, "made an Hoyland, and can make no more." "De­ scription sickens to rehearse her praise," demanding "a Muse that shall ascend the Skies I And like the subject of the Epode rise" (if 11. 21-26 are the epode, this is obscene). In fact there is a threat to world peace in one "whose beauteous Charms I Might court the world to rush at once to Arms I Whilst the fair Goddess! native of the Skies I Shall sit above and be the Victor's prize." The conclusion is ineffectively blasphemous, and I find it difficult to think that Chatterton was not having fun with the posturings of amatory verse in this poem while nevertheless keeping it straight enough that Baker could feel he might effectively court Hoyland with it. In "To Miss Hoyland VI," on the other hand, the in­ vigorating winds of satire have brought fresh life. Chatterton turns openly to the mockery that may have lurked in the ex­ travagances of "To Miss Hoyland I." The ardor, purity, and strength of the speaker's love surpass the turtledove's passion, the lark's delight in mounting and sinking, the nightingale's love of song. Nay, it surpasses even the vicar's infatuation with his own intonation, Alexander Catcott's obsession with geology, George Catcott's affection for frothy pot-talk, and so on, through other comic comparisons, concluding with ardors less spiritual: More than frail Mortals love a brother sinner, And more than Bristol Aldermen their dinner (When full four pounds of the well-fatten'd haunch In twenty mouthfuls fill the greedy paunch). If these true strains can thy dear bosom move, Let thy soft blushes speak a mutual love; But if thy purpose settles in disdain, Speak my dread fate, and bless thy fav'rite swain.

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The elaborately inapt comparisons and the final complacency at the cruelest blow are indeed a breath of fresh air—"surely," says Grevel Lindop, "an irresistible love poem." 21 We may note in passing that the satiric afflatus has had the same invigorating effect on another species of praise-by-wit poetry. The "Elegy on Mr. Wm. Smith" (12 August 1769—near the onset of the freethinking stance) avoids the curse of the practiced elegiac response because Chatterton be­ lieved (mistakenly, as it proved) that Smith's family had driven the poet's friend to suicide. After a limply conven­ tional opening stanza, Chatterton effectively claims that he is Smith's true family. Pope has given the hint and some of the language for this in his tribute to Gay in "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" (11. 255-260) and the final two stanzas of attack on the callous brutality of Smith's family owe much to the anal­ ogous passages in Pope's "Verses to the Memory of an Un­ fortunate Lady" (11. 29-30, 35-82). The infusion of genuine feeling and Pope has made for a strong if unpolished poem. Its strength lies, paradoxically, in a structure in which anger gradually obliterates grief. In the first stanza the anger is merely hinted at. In the second stanza Chatterton has become Smith's mourning brother, "Tho savage kindred bosoms cannot move." By the third the accusation that Smith's fam­ ily drove him to suicide has become overt, and the last cries for vengeance on them. Chatterton's freethinking, libertine epistles discussing or expressing love are in striking contrast not only to the ineffec­ tive love lyrics that preceded them, but also to the descriptive and pastoral love poetry of the Rowleyan and post-Rowleyan years, modes the last chapter will cover. The pastoral and de­ scriptive modes are not possible for the freethinking libertine. He stands aloof from any consensus pastoral might imply. His Nature is not the swain's communal setting but, from the time of Rochester at least, appetite and, for Chatterton and other freethinkers, illustration of Omnipotence working through rational and explicable law. Nor will the libertine in-

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dulge in the mood-making scene or the scene-making mood of the descriptive poet: he is aggressive; he makes love hap­ pen. The new stance results in a variety of epistles discussing or expressing love. Those here discussed fall into three groups—three epistolary explications of the libertine philoso­ phy of love, three love epistles, and two letters ostensibly written by female libertines. The three libertine letters might once have had a mild pi­ quancy. The first, "Say, Baker, if Experience Hoar" (from "Journal 6th," September 1769) is a definition by contrasts. It is shaped by a comparison, first, between the sort of melan­ cholic, sensitive lover who dominated the poems Chatterton wrote for Baker and the aggressive, impudent, free lover Chatterton now claims to be. However, aggressiveness and impudence are not enough. The new lover must be more meticulously defined, and so the second half of this epistle proceeds to distinguish between rake and buck, making metaphors of both names. Baker is offered the rather easy choice between the two. "Genuine Copy of a Letter" is a lively enough version of the same philosophy: a jocular arguing of the rake's view­ point shaped as a poetic epistle within a prose epistle. Both sender and recipient are more active poetic elements than in "Say, Baker": their circumstances enter into the argument. Yet the argument is essentially the unfavorable comparison again of the "sighing, dying, whining" line to that of the rake, who must "make love to all, and adore none." Prior was often able in such poems to suggest the somber underlying perceptions that can make sense of the idea that life should be played as a game, but Chatterton had neither the experience nor the maturity to suggest such further di­ mensions. The best that can be said for these epistles is that the new stance gets him out of the hyperbolical rut of the ear­ lier love poems. His immaturity shows even more strongly in the third of these letters of sexual advice. We lack an addressee or a date for "To a Friend on His Intended Marriage," but the stance is the same as in the two pieces just considered. What

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has not hitherto appeared, however, is the particular anxiety that dominates much of this epistle. Through the third stanza the sage manipulator of women is in form, but from that point on we begin to realize how close the playboy's bravado is to sexual anxiety. A wife too loving may "to another stretch her rising flame"; a "Religionist" is dangerous because "when Pleasure calls the Heart astray / The warmest Zealot, is the blackest Fiend." A nicety is required in judging one's plaything's intelligence: "Marry no letter'd Damsel whose wise Head, I May prove it just to graft the Horns on thine; I Marry no Idiot, keep her from thy Bed; I What the Brains want, will often elsewhere shine." In short, an insuf­ ferably pompous tone is the thinnest of veneers over a basic fear of sexual inadequacy. The first two and the last stanzas lend all of this a framework of platitudinous sententiousness. The whole tells us more about Chatterton at this stage of his life than about choosing a wife. Enough. A fair glimpse has been given of Chatterton at his silliest sexual pose. It is refreshing to be able to turn from such elaborate and shaky male bravado to the three epistles of De­ cember 1769 that show the freethinking, libertine Chatterton confronted with making his case to two particular women. In "To Miss Lydia Cotton" the brassy vulnerability of his stance and the odd introduction of freethinking theology almost atone for the lack of coherence in the argument. Like the bee (and Macheath) he buzzes from flower to flower and "Repletes his useful Thighs," disdaining "The fopling of some gay Parterre I The mimick'ry of Art" (coquettes or prosti­ tutes?) but hovering by the natural loveliness of the "Meadow Vi'let." In the third stanza he is no longer the busy worker but "a humble dumble Drone" anxiously awaiting the "com­ fort" of the queen and amused at his own ridiculous helpless­ ness. The metaphoric confusion—he is bee with flower, drone with queen, and brazen "am'rous Ass"—is almost winning, and the fourth stanza compounds the confusion when the mention of the magic word "Nature" allows him to cart his ponderous freethinking theology into this amatory

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pudding without dropping his original bee. Priest, free­ thinker, and bravura blasphemy retire briefly from the stage so that astrology may justify further bravado. Meyerstein (Life, pp. 305-306) thought it likely that Chatterton was aware of the implications of his horoscope. The epistle should be closely read, not only because of its vigor, but also because its confused, enthusiastic bravado, defiantly able to smile at it­ self, is, I believe, more characteristic of Chatterton than the anxious pomposity of "To a Friend on His Intended Mar­ riage." These qualities, I should guess, led Rossetti to include the Cotton poem among the "Perfect specimens" in Chatterton's acknowledged work. 22 Because Cotton returned the epistle, Chatterton wrote "A New Song"—one of his best poems. Its complete critical neglect hitherto may stem from its failure to cater to the tastes that have been Chatterton's usual support and from a conse­ quent overlooking of its allusions, the intricacy of its argument, the subtlety of the wit that pervades it, and the selfsearching honesty toward which it builds. In it the poet man­ ages to face the shallowness of his libertinism without selfcondemnation or apology. Its shaping principle is complex: an appeal to Lydia Cotton disguised as an apology to others that is actually an insult. To see how all of this is brought about, it is necessary to look at it stanza by stanza. The first apologizes to Alexander Catcott (not George—see Works, II, 1022-1023) for Chatterton's freethinking by saying that his moral navigation has erred by being deprived of its polestar. This might be well enough as apology did it not be­ come clear, by the fifth stanza, that the polestar is not God, Christianity, or the Athanasian Creed, but Lydia Cotton. The freethinking of the "Epistle to Catcott," just written, arose in short not from heretical thoughts but from disappointment in love. It would be difficult to imagine an excuse that would put the vicar of Temple Church and his geologicaltheological preoccupations more firmly in their inconsider­ able place in the poet's scheme of things. The second stanza alleges the same excuse for a disturbance

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in the Redcliff organ loft that caused the organist Broderip to expel Chatterton and his friends and that may well have had its part in Chatterton attacks on the organist's style in "Kew Gardens," "The Exhibition," and the 1 July 1770 letter to Cary (see Life, p. 321n). Here the knife is twisted by musical puns and a concise attack on Broderip's style. The next three stanzas explain the last lines of the first two by insulting four women in order to praise Cotton. If Turner, Harding, Grimes, and Flavia turned him down in one way and another, it meant nothing: "I chose without liking and left without pain." He scorned to be either a pet monkey or a pet poet who would, with his verses, paint them beauties that they lacked. Yet Cotton was beautiful: he wanted her badly, and so when she returned "To Miss Lydia Cotton," "Byjesu! it alter'd the Scene." At this point he begins his analysis of his response to Cot­ ton's dismissal of him, an analysis remarkable for combining honesty with an exceedingly insinuating fresh appeal to her. She's damnable Ugly my Vanity cryd You lie says my Conscience you lie: Resolving to follow the Dictates of Pride— I drew her a hag to my Eye. But would she regain her bright lustre agen And shine in her natural Charms Tis but to accept of the Works of my Pen And permit me to use my own Arms The delicacy of the connections to the first five stanzas is re­ markable. Flavia was ugly; Cotton must be lied into ugliness and Conscience knows it, but Pride prevailed: "I drew her a hag to my Eye," though he scorned to "paint [the other four] new Charms with a Lie." "Bright lustre" and "shine in her natural Charms" contrast her again with the four and also echo quietly the "North Star" of line four. Poetry is Chatterton's weapon; hence the strange appeal of the last two lines. Refusing his poetry is the ultimate insult. Yet the clear impli-

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cation is also that her "natural Charms" are her ultimate weapon and that if she accepts poems from him they will not need to be lying poems. On the other hand, he maintains his pride by insisting that his poetry has the power to restore to her what he knows is rightfully hers. Once one sees all this one can understand the peculiar wit of the title, which is lifted from Chatterton's favorite scriptural source. Revelation 14:3-4a reads, "And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn the song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth. These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins" (emphasis added). Cotton is on that throne; Turner, Harding, Grimes, and Flavia are the four beasts; and the elders are Catcott and Broderip, who may or may not be capable of "learning" the song. The title is then a further part of the apology-insult that masks this fresh appeal to Cotton. His freethinking has once again drawn blasphemy from his poetic arsenal. By New Year's Day 1770 the Cotton wound has healed sufficiently for Chatterton to return to the wooing of Polly Rumsey. In "The Advice" the standard carpe diem argument is augmented with accusations of undiscriminating indifference, insincerity, and superficiality and by satiric attacks on another poetic admirer and on Walpole. The concluding stanza omits all the smile-or-I-die hyperbole of the earlier love poems. As in "To Miss Hoyland VI," there is a take-me-or-leave-me posture that is rather engaging, especially in the final picture of Polly Rumsey turning from Chatterton to be read to sleep by Jack Fowler: Fly to your worthiest lover's arms, To him resign your swelling charms, And meet his gen'rous breast: Or if Pitholeon suits your taste, His muse with tatter'd fragments grac'd Shall read your cares to rest.

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The shaping argument does not fully assimilate this diversity: between stanzas four and five coherence breaks. Yet, as with the two epistles to Cotton, the advance over the "whining, sighing, dying" lover is distinct. The "Astrea Brokage Letter" is an account of a buckrake-heiress triangle from the sprightly, frivolous point of view of the girl. She places and characterizes herself first— confined in a boarding school, a devotee of fashionable Lon­ don literature, novels, and plays, beautiful, with £10,000 at her disposal. Her father, a rich Bristol merchant, proposes to marry her to Bob Barter, "a devil of a Buck" and the hopeful son of his good friend Hezekiah Barter. Bob "overturns a basket of oysters, or beats a dog with a better grace than any youthful votary of Bacchus, in that elegant city—the cream of politeness." When he visits Astrea "he claps on his hat, takes a turn round the room, very politely exposes his backside to the fire, and remarks it is very cold." Astrea has only contempt, of course, for this oaf. Her interest is centered on another: A young author, who has read more than Magliabechi, and wrote more love-letters than Ovid, is continually in­ voking the nine to describe me; but he never pays a com­ pliment to my person, without a concomitant one to my understanding. Though I have ten thousand pounds, he never mentions marriage; and when it is forced into his dicourse, rails against it most religiously: but he intrigues like a Jesuit to be made happy with a tete-a-tete conversa­ tion; or a walk in the wood; but, thank my stars! I have always courageously denied. He has sentiment in his common conversation; and is reported to have ruined three young ladies of fortune. Astrea's problem: "Pray, Mr. Hamilton, what am I to do in this case? . . . if I am obliged to marry that insignificant wretch, Bob Barter, will the forced ceremony oblige me to hate my literary lover?" There are several points of interest. Chatterton appears in the piece not only as the preferred young author with the train

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of ruined heiresses but also as "my cousin Ben, who under­ stands heraldry [and] can prove himself (and consequently me) to be descended from Ben. Johnson's grandmother's sis­ ter. So much for internal merit." Astrea's character is evoked with nice irony—partly her own, partly unconscious reflec­ tion of her winning silliness. Often it is difficult to distinguish between the two. She is, in fact, a middle-class Belinda, and Chatterton's skill at suggesting her winningly frivolous char­ acter in two pages is a notable new turn in his writing. To get a notion of the sort of relationship in Chatterton's life that could elicit such portraiture one has only to read the letter to him from Esther Saunders of 3 April 1770. Sir I to a Blage you I wright a few Lines to you But have not the weakness to be Believe all you Say of me for you may Say as much to other young Ladys for all I know But I cant go out of a Sunday with you for I ham afraid we Shall be. Seen to go Sir if it agreeable to you 1 had Take a walk with you in the morning for I be Belive we Shant be Seen a bout 6 a Clock But we must wait with patient for ther is a Time for all Things. The rake that appears in Chatterton's postscript to this is in rather less glamorous action than his three epistles to male friends would suggest. It would seem clear, at any rate, that the Astrea Brokage letter is a skillful sort of literary day­ dreaming, magnifying himself and the girls to whom he as­ pired and putting his middle-class oafish rivals in their places. In "The Letter Paraphras'd" Chatterton has taken a taunt­ ing, unsigned, undated, rhymed letter from another girl "in Chace" and translated it into the obscene taunt of one who accepts or rejects lovers solely on the basis of genital size. It is an inquiry about the size of his penis and a suggestion that nothing short of eighteen inches will suffice. The two letters are printed, with the rather full explanatory apparatus needed to translate the girl's half, in Works (I, 686-687; II, 1134-1135). Her spelling is of the same school as Esther Saunders's, but her taunting the poet with his youth, her connecting eager-

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ness and constancy with maturity, and her rather sprightly rhyming suggest that she amounted to more than Chatterton's paraphrase would grant. When one considers the educa­ tion open to most English girls in the eighteenth century it would be folly to judge either her or Esther Saunders by the quality of their spelling. As for the paraphrase, uneasiness about obscenity and about the poet's reputation have probably led to its being overread (see Works, II, 1134-1135). My reading would be that Chatterton's paraphrase grows from the girl's taunt at his youth: "I not be Coarted by Boys nor Navis I I Haive a man an man Shall Haive me." The poet, at seventeen, was perhaps anxious about his own adequacy and so he has, I take it, built the entire paraphrase about the equation manhood equals size. The other details, especially the diction, serve to coarsen the character of the girl who would insist on such an equation. Yet this too may be the overreading of a psychoanalytic age. Almost any boy in his teens produces obscene drawings or writings, and it is perhaps folly to put much weight on some­ thing of this sort merely because the boy later became fa­ mous. It is clear, at any rate, that the girl suggested by the paraphrase is as far from Astrea as is Chatterton's buck from his rake. The point to be made for this whole section is that the freethinking and libertinism freed Chatterton from what we have seen to be a particularly tedious amatory style, produc­ ing, in the epistles to Cotton and Rumsey, some strong poetry from a segment of his writing that had hitherto prom­ ised little either for his reputation or his development as a poet. The Astrea Brokage letter points, furthermore, toward what he is about to do in the way of prose fictions.

"THE ART OF CURLISM" In the first four months of 1770 the idea must have been gradually growing in Chatterton's mind that Horace Walpole had been wrong to urge him to labor conscientiously as a

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scrivener so "that when he should have made a fortune, he might unbend himself with the studies consonant to his incli­ nations" (Works, II, 770). Four London periodicals— Town and Country Magazine, the Freeholder's Magazine, Court and City, and the Middlesex Journal —were in effect telling him that Walpole was mistaken, for they seemed eager to print lengthy pieces of all sorts, whether recast from older Bristol materials or newly written. Two long notes from the 1768 "Rolle of Seyncte Bartlemeweis" appear in the December 1769 Town and Country as "The Antiquity of Christmas Games"; the 1769 supplement contains a long, reworked elegy on Thomas Phillips and the Ossianic piece "The Hirlas II"; the January issue prints Astrea Brokage's letter and the Bristolian prose tale "The Unfortunate Fathers"; the Bristolian "Elegy on the Demise of a Great Genius" is rewritten to attack Samuel Johnson in "February" in the issue of that month. "The Constabiliad" appears in political dress as "The Consuliad" in the January Freeholder's. February also sees the African eclogue "Heccar and Gaira" printed in Court and City and the Decimus letter to Grafton in the Middlesex. Most promising of all these acceptances, the 822-line "Resignation" begins to appear in parts in the April Freeholder's. Charles Churchill was dead. It cannot have seemed unrealistic to Chatterton to begin thinking of himself as a new Churchill on the Patriot horizon, a writer rather than an attorney's apprentice. It remained only to free himself of that clogging apprenticeship (the "Will," as we have seen, accomplished that swiftly in April after earlier strategies failed) and to set up shop in the publishing center of England, where his work was so welcome. It is equally clear that this drive to write for fame and for­ tune abruptly shifts direction about the end of May 1770. To that point Churchill in political verse and Junius in political prose are his chief models. In May, however, less than a month after he reached London, the government's prosecu­ tion of the Patriot editors forces him to depend on the nonpolitical writing that the journals could still print. Yet throughout 1770 there is an increasing willingness to try any-

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thing that can be brought to print, whether congenial to his own concerns or not. One need not be moralistic about this turning away from such self-generated concerns as Rowley, the artistic possibilities of various modes, the heady outlook of the freethinking rake. Chatterton had to live, and it was clear that he could not hope to live by Rowley or by freethinking poetry. Even in the Rowleyan writings, in fact, responses to what were in effect markets are already quite evident; we have seen the character of those writings shift under the pressures of appealing to a series of actual or poten­ tial patrons—Barrett and George Catcott, then James Dodsley, then Walpole. Such pressures do not necessarily prohibit literature in Chatterton or anyone else; they may foster it. We must decide in each case whether what the market seemed to welcome catalyzed or inhibited Chatterton's powers, whether he used its pressures to make poetry or allowed them to keep his writing at the level of hackwork. Chatterton was quite aware of the latter possibility, but his main concern was getting on. Imposing himself on the world was in itself an exhilarating affair and his letters to Bristol are full of the excitement of playing a winning game despite shift­ ing odds and favorites. In his letter to his mother and his friend Thomas Cary of 6 May he asserts, "No author can be poor who understands the arts of booksellers—Without this necessary knowledge the greatest genius may starve; and, with it, the greatest dunce live in splendor. This knowledge I have pretty well dipped into." A week later, after exulting in the imprisonment of the Patriot editors and at his new con­ nection with Marybone Gardens, he exclaims, "Bravo, hey boys, up we go!" He tells his sister on May 30 that "he is a poor author, who cannot write on both sides," talks of bring­ ing booksellers to his terms, and says "Courtiers are so sensi­ ble of their deficiency in merit, that they generally reward all who know how to daub them with an appearance ofit." On 1 July, exuberantly running through his achievements for Cary, he boasts, "Observe, I write in all the Magazines," but adds, "Coming out tomorrow, are the only two Pieces I have

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the Vanity to call Poetry"—he has not lost his sense of the dif­ ference between literature and hackwork. The sense of mar­ ket pressure is particularly strong in this letter: "All must be Ministerial or Entertaining." We can reasonably suppose that even before he left Bristol he was full of this rather hectic exhilaration, especially in early 1770, when the London editors seemed eager to print whatever he could write. Yet he was not fooling himself about the quality of much of this writing. We have noted his comments in the "Will" about affecting "every thing" and imposing it on the world. The "Epistle to Catcott" has shown an acute awareness of the sort of sleight of hand common in speculative writing. We shall see more of this perceptive skepticism about authorship and publishing expressed in "Memoirs of a Sad Dog." Mar­ ketplace writing can be art; more often it is "culinary." Chatterton's amazing precocity at picking up new subjects, modes, and forms is in itself instructive. This precocity, which we saw as early as his 1764 imitations of Gay, enabled him to respond to the market more rapidly than most au­ thors. Whether this worked to his and his writing's advantage is another question, one that has already been faced in his political satire and that now faces us even more urgently as we consider the bewildering variety of journalistic satire under­ taken in the last few months of his life. A month before his death, Chatterton wrote an effective satire about what three months in London had taught him concerning the tricks of his trade. The ambivalence of its title reaches to the central problems of this section: it will be in­ structive to consider "The Art of Puffing" both as poem and as clue to how Chatterton was thinking about the writings of his last few months. He had to find a form for a poem that would satirize current literature by arguing that it was a trade like any other, that gain was the soul of contemporary wit. His imaginative device is to survey literature and publishing from the point of view of one at the humble heart of the trade, a bookseller's journeyman who offers advice to "the young Author" and signs himself "Vamp." The name meant "to

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patch up, to produce by patchwork from old materials," and it was frequently used in literary contexts (see Oxford English Dictionary). The name suggests the going method of con­ structing both works and magazines—a method well known to Chatterton. The title and text deal specifically with the methods by which literary success was ensured, the methods of promoting or "puffing." At the opening and again at the close, the addressed author is informed that his part is to invent a title to "make the heavy drug of Rhime go down." From the point at which, as Ring Lardner said, "the manuscript is loaded on the trucks," the trade takes over. Its demigods are not authors, but the pub­ lishers, successors of the great Edmund Curll, whose mem­ ory Vamp celebrates with appropriate jargon: ". . . Curl, immortal, never dying name! I A Double Pica in the Book of Fame, I By various arts did various Dunces prop, I And tick­ led every fancy to his shop. ..." Vamp then lists as worthy successors to Curll the booksellers Pottinger, Cooke, and Baldwin; they have arts—"inventions, Patents, Cuts, and hums" (perhaps gimmicks, royal or governmental patronage, illustrations, hoaxes)—that can sell even such trash as Boswell's recent books on Paoli and Corsica. The publishers Vamp names are among those whose lists were the most mis­ cellaneous, containing everything from satires, plays, and Bibles to jestbooks, cookbooks, and chronicles of crime. Vamp turns next to the sorts of puffing done by the wits themselves and the periodical editors. This, of course, is that part of "the art of Curlism" Chatterton knew best. The wits themselves fully understand the game. They puff each other's works. "The Deserted Village," for example, has just ap­ peared: "For this they puff the heavy Goldsmiths Line / And hail his Sentiments tho' trite, divine." Authors and editors act in collusion to heighten the scandals, causes celebres, quarrels, mysteries, and commonplaces of political writing. The peri­ odicals are the author's chief support, the market for vamped work. Once one magazine has made a splash, imitators quickly arise.

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The poem is a lively if somewhat centrifugal satiric argu­ ment. We can hear, diluted and at distance, the attacks in The Tale of a Tub and The Dunciad. The special tone is that of the insider and for us it is full of the feeling of the trade wherein Chatterton hoped to make his mark. At first his choice of named authors, Boswell and Goldsmith, might seem un­ lucky, but it probably gives us a good sense of how these men and their most recent work looked to one trying to live by his pen in London in 1770. Ironically enough, Town and Country did not publish "The Art of Puffing" until January 1783, when it was discovered in their files, nearly thirteen years after Chatterton's death. By then the Rowley controversy had so puffed Chatterton's name that a facsimile cut of his holo­ graph seemed to be called for. Of the journalistic satirical writings, only the prose fictions have sufficient literary interest to be considered in any detail at all. Chatterton's prose political letters are ingenious, uninten­ tionally comic when we think of the seventeen-year-old addressing the statesmen of his day with such lordly truculence, but, finally, depressing. The ingenuity lies in the un­ erring skill with which he aped not only the style of Junius but also Junius's air of having inside information—something we know Chatterton could not have had. Chatterton's "You and I know quite well, sir, that though appearances are X, the ugly reality is, of course, Y" is carried off with considerable aplomb. One part of his secret is that he sometimes writes his letters as soon as one from Junius on the same subject reaches print. Those not keeping close watch on the timing might well take Junius and Chatterton's Decimus as confirmatory of each other's expertise on secret political machinations. Stylis­ tically, the ornate, courtly, balanced sentences ofjunius, with their tone of studied insolence, are caught to the last intona­ tion. This debt is handsomely enough acknowledged. Chat­ terton's usual signature is Decimus. Marcus Junius Brutus was the chief of the noble conspirators, Decimus Junius Brutus a lesser conspirator. Pseudonymity has, of course, a further benefit: without it, who would have printed or read

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the political pronouncements of a seventeen-year-old Bristol apprentice? In these letters the basic argument is always the same, though it may be presented in many ways: there is a conspir­ acy among Bute, the Princess Dowager, and their tools in and out of government to alienate the foolish king from his liberty-loving subjects and to make government a means for personal aggrandizement. The writer must remain anony­ mous (his identity is cloaked in a Latin name suggesting anti-tyrannical sympathies or love of truth or country) because he has access to secret information about the conspiracy. The ostensible recipient will usually be a party to the conspiracy, either a major figure or a tool, but he may occasionally be a hero of opposition (a conspirator for freedom) bravely stand­ ing up to those in power and encouraged in his stand by the knowing writer. The impact on the original actual audi­ ence—the Patriot or potentially Patriot reader—is to confirm his suspicions of conspiracy (apparently a human constant on which political writers can depend) and to give him pleasure in the cool, "polite" style and the impunity of the anonymous truth teller as he taunts the conspirators or encourages the heroes of opposition. We have texts of ten Chatterton political letters and sure evidence, sometimes brief passages, for seven lost letters. Of those lost, the most interesting would have been the two written in May on the anti-Patriot, proministerial side, for here theJunius mode is used against the Patriots. Michael Lort transcribed the conclusion, for example, of one of Chatterton's Moderator (his signature) essays (see Works, II, 774776): Mr. Wilkes now shines at the head of the Patriots—He is the Epitome of the Faction, Selfinterested, Treasonable and Inconsiderable. That Minister must be Virtuous who is opposed by such Pretended Patriots. Their Approba­ tion is Infamy, and the way of Truth is only known as being opposite to the Course they take.

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The remaining fifteen letters extant or lost are Patriot. The Patriot letters are composed from 16 February to 21 May, at which point the market was closed by the prosecutions against the Patriot editors. At that juncture Chatterton wrote the two lost proministerial letters, but they were not pub­ lished and he turned largely to nonpolitical marketplace writ­ ing. In August, the month of his death, he wrote three last political letters, two to Bishop Newton and one to Lord Chief Justice Mansfield. Two of these reached print. Ingenious and precocious his political letters certainly are, but the very ingenuity increases their depressing effect. We look back on their fluency and recall what Chatterton could do when building his own poetic worlds rather than imitating that of another. There is no originality or even, perhaps, genuine feeling here. They are done for the market only. We have but to compare them to the verse satires on the same subjects—comparing, say, the Decimus letter to the Princess Dowager with "The Whore of Babylon" or even the Decimus letter to Grafton with the lesser poem "Resignation" to see the difference between Chatterton aping Junius and Chatterton using Churchill's mode to build poems. Less assured and yet artistically more interesting are the prose fictions written in 1770 for the London journals, works that have been used to suggest that Chatterton could have be­ come an important novelist in the school of Smollett had he lived. These fictions fall into two groups—pathetic and comic—and the latter into sketches of eccentrics and comic actions. Both pathetic and comic works are heavily satiric in tone. Except for the first of the three pathetic actions, all are written during Chatterton's last summer. "The Unfortunate Fathers" was written in Bristol in January 1770 at a point when Chatterton was busy turning his inner and outer life into a very miscellaneous batch of writing: the epistles on religion to Catcott and Smith, the freethinking love epistles, the credos and freethinking poems copied into Catcott's Treatise, the Astrea Brokage letter. Each takes some facet of

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the poet's thought or experience, isolates it, then pushes it to a concentrated, often extreme statement, or places it within a more elevated and, presumably, therefore, more interesting situation. The style and action of "The Unfortunate Fathers" reduces characters and situation to their most rudimentary stereotypes so as to emphasize a central concern of Chatterton: the con­ trast between the freethinking nobility of young George Hinckley and the avaricious Bristol worldliness of his father. This theme we have met before. Each character is the essence of his type, and the types are labeled rather than rendered. Frequently the reader is invited to fill in the details. Thus, the heroine's only function is to be the beautiful, sacrificial vic­ tim. Likewise, her father is simply an industrious, tootrusting Bristol merchant and doting father. Attention is thus focused on the hero, George Hinckley, and his dishonest, av­ aricious father. A marriage is agreed upon between the two young people; then old Hinckley ruins Mr. Sladon and con­ sequently forbids his son to marry beneath his fortune. George and Maria maintain their love, but old Hinckley man­ ages that Mr. Sladon shall believe George a party to his ruin and George is forbidden the Sladon house. He writes to Maria, but a sense of duty to her father forces her to return his letter unopened. At this point we have reached the situation that most interests Chatterton, and so we move from stereotypes and protestations of inefFability to close exposi­ tion of character. When a person of good sense and strong natural parts, has not the happiness of a religious education, he is gen­ erally a Deist or Socinian: to the most refined notions of honour and morality, he united an absolute contempt for religion. . . . When he heard that Maria had returned his letter, he raved to the utmost extravagance of madness; then appearing calm, he sat down, and writing the letter, sealed it, and left it on the table. Having done this, he went into his chamber, and immediately shot himself.

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The letter gives young Hinckley's thinking in detail. I shall not accuse your conduct, for you are my father; I shall only endeavour to vindicate the action I am about to perpetrate. . . . There is a principle in man, (a shadow of the divinity) which constitutes him the image of God; you may call it conscience, grace, inspiration, the spirit, or whatever name your education gives it. As I can rec­ oncile suicide to this principle, with me it is consequently no crime. . . . when our being becomes dissocial, when we neither assist or are assisted by society, we do not in­ jure it by laying down our load of life. After this letter, the rapid deaths of the other three principals are handled perfunctorily in four sentences. The clash be­ tween old Hinckley's self-seeking and young Hinckley's freethinking high-mindedness is clearly the raison d'etre. The barest narrative is being used to frame Chatterton's own ideas about religion and suicide. The autobiographical elements make their appearance in Maria (Polly Rumsey's formal name), in the returned letter (cf. the epistle to Lydia Cotton), in the absolute noncommunication between father and son, and in the young man's freethinking. Chatterton's own sub­ sequent attempt to gain his freedom through suicide threats and especially the tone of the letter to Barrett of February or March 1770 are to the point. We are intended to feel admira­ tion for George Hinckley and detestation for his father; they are, respectively, Chatterton's idealization of himself, and his surrogate for the Bristol morality by which older heads were counseling him to be guided. We must deal briefly later with his hint that Christianity might have taught the hero better. The Maria Friendless letter (15 June) is lifted, with some changes and rearrangements, from Johnson's Ramblers 170 and 171. It deserves brief attention as the sort of subject that interested Chatterton—how a young woman might become a prostitute and what sort of feelings one ought to have toward her. The details included in the first-person narrative are de­ termined by the resulting double moral—they illustrate the

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snares likely to face unprotected women and the pity rather than censure such a life ought to call forth. Ypt Chatterton's major intent would seem to be the placing of something in Town and Country with the least effort. The piece exemplifies the vamping he satirizes in "The Art of Puffing." "The False Step" (June) is also the first-person story of a female penitent, this time an upper-class adulteress. The moralizing commentary, which constitutes well over a third of the piece, is seasoned for middle-class palates, for the "guilty Frances" consistently attacks the morality of her own class. If there is any real spirit in high life, any generous indif­ ference as to the affairs of this world, which should con­ stitute the sole merit of noblesse, it is oftener found in a citizen's wife. However the court may exclaim against the city, there is less mercenary meanness in the dames of Ludgate-Hill, than in a whole masquerade of right hon­ ourable dishonourables. The action amounts essentially to taking the carefree at­ titudes and deliciously dangerous situation enjoyed by an Astrea Brokage, elevating the whole to upper-class life, and extrapolating the likely and scandalous outcome. Frances de­ spises wealthy coxcombs but has a weakness for men of sense, especially when fortune has not favored them. She falls in love with such a man, Mr Knowles. Her father demands that she marry a doting, elderly earl, and she reluctantly con­ sents. The earl misinterprets a subsequent confrontation be­ tween her and Knowles and confines her to the house and a duenna. These measures drive her to flee to Scotland with Knowles, whereupon the old earl dies of grief, leaving her all and blaming only himself. It is from this socially elevated but deeply guilty situation that she concludes her letter: "O my God! what an everlasting hell of reflection must attend the guilty I Frances." All three pathetic actions, then, illustrate middle-class moral attitudes somewhat curiously. Chatterton's readers can

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be pleasantly scandalized while being edified. Each central character is interestingly sinful: Hinckley a freethinking suicide, Maria Friendless a prostitute, Frances a wealthy, adulterous countess. The reader is, by one device and another, allowed to admire, to identify with, to participate in the scandalous situations without condoning them, since both the melodramatic conclusions and the narrative points of view and their proper styles fully condemn the intriguing situations. The third-person narrator in "The Unfortunate Fathers" and the first-person narrators in the other two pieces fully criticize the protagonists, allowing the reader his vicari­ ous pleasure without any sense of guilt. Chatterton's own freethinking, libertine sympathies would lie with young Hinckley, Maria, and Frances, but the appeal to the reader is akin to that of true-confession stories and advice columns. In the comic fictions as in the early fables character is more interesting than moralizing. They call for more stylistic in­ genuity than do the pathetic actions, since they cannot build from the ready-made phraseology of conditioned-reflex moralizing. Southey and Cottle, editors of the first collected edition (1803), attributed nearly all of the Town and Country "Hunter of Oddities" series to Chatterton, though he himself claimed only the June 1770 sketch, a narrative episode of no particular merit, but characteristic of the series in that all deal with obsessions, tics—any sort of character fixation or rigidity—in a generally comic but tolerant tone. The tenth sketch in the series, however, has strong claims to be Chatterton's. It deals with the sort of literary trifler living by the inse­ cure support of his wit that Chatterton must have encoun­ tered constantly in London. Indeed, Tom Goose-quill's career is a low echo of Chatterton's. "He started a journeyman haberdasher, and from tagging of laces, he soon took to tag­ ging of rhymes." He finds, like Swift's poet in "The Progress of Poetry," a correlation between an empty belly and a preg­ nant muse. He offers himself as an actor in starved roles, then turns to political writing on both sides, to inventing "Foreign

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Intelligence," and to writing reports of stock-market rumors. All of these literary adventures prove so uncertain, however, that he plans to turn to "polite writing"—reporting scandals of upper-class life. This time the oddity sketch has turned into a skeletal comic narrative of the sort we shall see perhaps too fully fleshed out in "Memoirs of a Sad Dog." Tom certainly fits smoothly enough into Chatterton's known writings and so would seem to be another instance of Chatterton's drawing on immediate experience for print and money. The letter from Tony Selwood is a strong comic sketch in which imaginative use is made of the existence of the "Hunter of Oddities" series. Tony fears that his own oddity may well become the subject for one of the sketches; this he forestalls by writing his own sketch—describing his eccentricity in rich comic detail and giving the quite sufficient but comically in­ furiating cause of it. His father is wealthy, but he has stocked his own, Tony's, and his daughter Biddy's wardrobes en­ tirely with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century clothing once belonging to persons somehow connected with the fortunes of the Selwood family (could this be an ironic backward look at the Rowley enterprise?). The father wears court dress of the time of James I—a hat "like a strawberry basket," a ruff shot with holes, and so on down to "a monstrous pair of trunkhose, square shoes, and large shoe-roses." Tony himself will be disinherited of an estate of six thousand a year if he refuses the sixteenth-century dress assigned to him—a horse-mane coiffure after the manner of Ostric's original, a hat like a bed­ pan, a yellow ruff, and so on again down to mottled stockings and "monstrous pikes." The sister had been in the sorriest case: she wore a hood of unconscionable thick velvet, which projected on each side of her face like a horse's blinds; her ruff was enormous, and betwixt that and her head-gear there was nothing but the tip of her nose to be seen: her stays reached down to her knees, her stockings were yel­ low, and her shoes square-toed. . . . My sister Biddy's

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gown was as heavy as a modern novel: upon a moderate computation it had above three pounds of silver in its embroidery: the colours indeed were faded, but that de­ fect was made up in the length of the train, which af­ forded the cat a five minutes play while Miss Biddy was turning the corner. Biddy, however, having a legacy from an aunt, ran off with a soldier to a somewhat more modish life. For Tony there seems no such way out, and he pleads with the editor to make his father see reason. The details are as ludicrous as Tony's plight; the whole piece is much better than anything in the regular series.23 The antique detail, the clever idea of the anxious oddity anticipat­ ing the series writer, and many echoes of familiar Chatterton allusions (see Works, II, 1164) convince me that this excellent sketch is his. The fact of his never claiming it argues neither way, since it was published a week after his death. If it be his, he has imagined a situation that engenders comic detail and insures strong comic sympathy with the hero. Three lengthy comic narratives, the last pieces to be con­ sidered in this chapter, were apparently written in July and August 1770, the last two months of Chatterton's life. Al­ though their mimetic organizing principles are quite individ­ ual—all borrowed from going modes of prose narrative—and although each is, in its own way, sufficiently lively and inter­ esting, the ultimate principle of each would seem to be to construct a plausible fiction that is as long and, hence, as lu­ crative as the space available in a single issue of Town and Country. Chatterton expected "Memoirs of a Sad Dog" to be published in the July number (see Works, II, 1118), which it would have filled. Since the editors chose, however, to pub­ lish it in two parts, it takes up half of both theJuly and August numbers. "The Happy Pair: A Tale" takes up nearly half of the 1771 supplement, printed a year and four months after

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Chatterton's death. "Adventures of a Star," which is very probably but not certainly Chatterton's, would have made up about four-fifths of a regular issue, though the editors chose again to publish it in two numbers—October and November 1770. Since Town and Country seems to have paid on publica­ tion, it is likely that Chatterton received payment only for the first half of "Memoirs": the other two and a half pieces saw print after his death. In the discussion of the three I shall try to show that—despite their liveliness, skill, and topicality—their subjects, styles, and organizations seem primarily aimed at producing as long a piece as Town and Country was likely to print. "Memoirs of a Sad Dog" is a first-person picaresque fiction in which the Sad Dog ("a debauched fellow" according to Partridge) is led through a series of adventures—usually amorous or acquisitive or both—that allow for ample satiric digression and that can reasonably culminate in his writing such a piece. It makes heavy use of a great variety of Chatter­ ton's own interests and experiences—his personal and literary life in London, libertine attitudes, Horace Walpole, antiquar­ ian matters, hoaxing, heraldry, Ossian, Smollett, Patriot pol­ itics, the Cumberland-Grosvenor case, music, Robin Hood, etymology. The hero, Harry Wildfire, is very much of the precarious upper-class situation of Tony Selwood and has much of that hero's vexed amusement at his own sorry plight. At the time of writing the memoirs his quarters and economic status are very like Chatterton's, and his class— worthy but out-of-pocket—is what Chatterton apparently felt his own to be. In fact all of the young heroes of Chatter­ ton's later writings are gentlemen of spirit, sense, and wit upon whom fortune has not yet deigned to smile. "I am, Mr. Printer, a sad dog, a very sad dog; have run through many sad adventures, had many sad escapes from the clutches of bailiffs, and at the time of writing this sad relation, am throned in a broken chair within an inch of a thundercloud." Chatterton was now living in the garret of Mrs. Angel,

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sackmaker, in Brook Street, Holborn (secLife, pp. 281, 391). The description of the situation is cheerful and admirably concise. Harry begins, perhaps in imitation of Fielding's first chap­ ter in Joseph Andrews, with an attack on two contemporary memoir writers—the quack eye doctor John Taylor and John Buncle. He then proceeds rapidly through eleven episodes that bring him from a modestly well-offheir (his legacy being £5000 and a copy of The Way to Save Wealth) to the uncertain­ ties of authorship in a garret. It is a series of economic ups and downs, all marked by Harry's imprudent but winning ad­ dress, most showing him either winning or losing at gam­ bling or womanizing. "Memoirs" is a cheerful, lively piece—perhaps a projection of the sort of life Chatterton might have preferred to live—but it has no particular direc­ tion. The picaresque, episodic organization allows Chatterton to cover much otherwise unrelated ground. The length is lim­ ited, apparently, only by how much print one issue of Town and Country could contain: Harry's conclusion perhaps strengthens this case: "Permit this then to appear in your uni­ versally admired Magazine; it may give some entertainment to your reader, and a dinner to I Your humble servant, I Harry Wildfire." "The Happy Pair: A Tale" is a very slight, anticlimactic narrative eked out to substantial length by a prolonged imita­ tion of the style of Tristram Shandy. The interest of the piece lies in the skillful mimicry of Sterne in the long prologue, and there are also subsequent recurring asides to the narrator's "dear Polly"—certainly in imitation of Tristram's Jenny and probably a compliment to Chatterton's Polly Rumsey. To see Chatterton's skill at aping Sterne one must read the whole in­ troductory passage: all of it is solid satire, based primarily on Tristram Shandy (I, viii), but it is followed by a limp and ir­ relevant narrative. The theme of the Sterne imitation is al­ ready familiar: that happiness depends on individual whim; the targets—Bishop Warburton and the rest—are also famil­ iar. Capitalizing on the popularity of Sterne is pretty clearly

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the raison d'etre. One could wish that mimicry had carried into the narrative. "Adventures of a Star" maintains the tone of amused detachment, though it is somewhat more acerbic than "Memoirs" and "The Happy Pair." Like "Memoirs" it is episodic, but the star—a piece of male costume ornament— has greater access to truth than Harry Wildfire could hope for. The episodes, therefore, consist of both the unguarded events and the insights into character to which the star's position and magic virtue give it access. The result is a more satiric piece than "Memoirs." The targets are widely dispersed—upperclass mores, middle-class heirs and parvenus, ministerial political shenanigans, and quacks. Again the point of the or­ ganization seems to be to find a form that can stretch a miscel­ laneous satire through most of one issue of Town and Country. It is lively and entertaining. Chatterton's frequent borrow­ ings from Smollett incline one to think that he has borrowed the idea from the Adventures of an Atom and that he was prob­ ably thinking of Smollett's picaresque novels in "Memoirs." The two pieces together have given rise to the notion that Chatterton might well have gone on to be a successful novelist in Smollett's manner had he lived. The pieces cer­ tainly suggest that he could manage such writing. But at this point Chatterton died. Whether he would have written good—as well as entertaining—fictions is a question that cannot be answered. Certainly neither of these pieces pre­ tends to be more than entertainment. One might think that the mind that could create the Rowley-Canynge world and its best works could also have done important things in the novel, but neither Hazlitt's notion that Chatterton had al­ ready done his best possible work by 177024 nor Rossetti's contrary assumption that a more mature Chatterton would have ranked with Shakespeare can be demonstrated. We may well feel that as artist Chatterton could have done almost any­ thing he chose, but what we can learn of his character falls far short of establishing that he would have chosen to try greater things than these last two "culinary" works. The prose fic-

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tions of the summer of 1770 are a new direction, to be sure, but nothing from this summer comes near the level of "Bristowe Tragedie," that earliest Rowleyan piece from the sum­ mer of 1768. THE SATIRIC REVERSE In the third chapter we saw how much of Rowley was a search for heroes, heroic modes of life, and literary modes adapted to these subjects. The greater part of the satiric writ­ ing of 1769-1770—so much less innovative, so demonstrably imitative of a few outstanding models—is also patently the reverse of the earlier heroic obverse. Most of what goes on in this predominantly satiric period is Chatterton's exploration of evil in society and in men, a search for evil commensurate with his anger. The two impulses, as in the heroic search, feed each other. The intuited targets call for adequate modes; the modes of Pope and Churchill and the lesser modes of bur­ lesque libretto, mock contention, amatory satire, and prose fiction come to him with traditional targets. He accepts whichever of the provided targets are congenial and adds fresh targets of his own. The satiric modes, however, come to him more fully articulated and more adapted to his century than the Rowleyan modes. Less artistic inventiveness, shap­ ing, and adaptation are called for, and it must be admitted that, as a consequence, the satiric works have, finally, much less literary interest than the Rowleyan and are more fre­ quently opportunistic. In both periods we see his strong inclination to put most of his literary eggs into one basket as long as there is the prospect of material success and fame. We also see in both periods a persisting impulse to deal with characters larger than life, pa­ ternal figures—whether ancient heroes or modern oppressors. This impulse will persist in the celebratory works canvassed in the last chapter. We can also see a duplicity, a desire to con­ ceal himself in both the Rowleyan fiction and the anonymity or pseudonymity of most of the satirical writings. This com-

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bination of the appeal of larger-than-life subjects and a dis­ guising role for himself is argued as central to the psychologi­ cal roots of Chatterton's art in Phyllis Greenacre's studies of the poet.25 Most will conclude that the growing influence of the liter­ ary marketplace in the satiric period was, on the whole, un­ fortunate. Though the best satiric works are of artistic inter­ est, the proportion of insubstantial pieces surges. Yet we must remember that the turn from Rowley to satire is not a simple turn from heroically admirable to grandiosely evil sub­ jects. The world had refused Rowley; it is understandable that Chatterton should turn in anger on such a world.

Imagined Places and Poetries: 1768-1770 Through the previous chapter we have followed a history of gradual but undeniable artistic decline from the uneven yet remarkable achievements of the Rowleyan year, through the vigorous but imaginatively weaker and less original verse sat­ ire, to the sometimes vigorous, clever, amusing, but rarely imaginative and nearly always imitative work for the London editors. The sequence of artistic decline corresponds to chronological shifts in subject and mode. Because it has been a downhill story, a depressing sequence, it is good to be able to conclude with substantial evidence that in four modes, at least, Chatterton's poetic power did not decline under the pressure of choices partly forced on him by circumstances and partly stemming from his own thirst for fame and fortune. These four modes, first attempted during the Rowleyan year, persist to the end; through the two-year period, Chatterton continues to work steadily and, on balance, effectively at familiar epistles (discussed in the previous chapter) and at de­ scriptive poetry, Ossianics, and pastoral. One of these modes, pastoral, was a recognized "kind" throughout the century—a style, a subject area, a mode of thought that, like fable, tended toward a loosely observed range of structural alternatives. Two of the modes, the de­ scriptive and the Ossianic, were recognized for praise or blame in the later eighteenth-century, but more often as styles than as kinds. Johnson, an unfriendly witness, accurately suggested the range of kinds favored in the descriptive style as "Ode and elegy and sonnet." The Ossianic mode was the cre­ ation or discovery of one man and it too was taken as a style—one liable both to parody and ridicule and to critical

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acclaim. All three, we shall see, are again a kind of celebratory reverse—a reverse, this time, of the satiric effort that was pressing simultaneously along its own course. These three modes not only have their strong beginnings in the Rowley year; they are also, throughout their courses, peculiarly sym­ pathetic to the Rowleyan spirit. UT PICTURA ET MUSICA POESIS Descriptive poetry appears as a persistent and distinctive mode in the later eighteenth century, though it has been the practice since Wordsworth to point out scattered anticipations of the mode as hopeful lights amidst the encircling Augustan gloom. The mode takes many forms and appears in passages of poems not in themselves descriptive. It characteristically presents an imaginary landscape in temporal or spatial se­ quences or both together. The landscape is populated by the observing, participating poet who imagines it in order to ex­ press an emotion, but not the sort of emotion attendant upon discursive thought. His poetic structures, therefore, are sel­ dom logical or argumentative, but rather consist of juxtapos­ ing and interrelating of the sort that we associate with music or painting: hence the title of this section. We have all of us the experience of the expressiveness of painting and music. If we try, when reading descriptive poetry, to sense its affinities to painting in subject matter and spatial juxtaposition and to music in sequence, recurrence, chronological juxtaposition, and sound, we shall understand it more fully and may perhaps overcome the chronological distortions that sometimes ren­ der sound eighteenth-century descriptive poetry stilted and artificial to twentieth-century tastes. We shall be less likely to demand, for example, that logical syntax and argument or ex­ tended metaphor structure sentence and poem. We shall be more receptive to the nonlogical juxtapositions and interrela­ tionships of expressive elements that constitute the special contribution of descriptive poetry to the understanding of emotion.

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This descriptive poetry seems to be an offshoot of the land­ scape or topographical poetry that deals with specific, named places, is at least ostensibly concerned with the actual features of these places, and fairly consistently dwells, therefore, on the changes time has wrought. The logic of this time motif is that returns to familiar scenes makes us particularly aware of change, either in the scenes or in ourselves. When the land­ scape poem appeared in the later seventeenth and early eight­ eenth centuries, these changes were usually related somehow to the sense of national community, as in Pope's "Windsor Forest." From the mid-eighteenth century on the changes are more likely to be personal, contrasting to the rhythms and re­ currences of natural change or of successive human genera­ tions, as in Gray's Eton College ode, Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," or Dylan Thomas's "Fern Hill." It is the fiction of landscape poetry that the described landscape gives rise to the poet's emotions; this is deceptive, of course, since the features described, the tone, and the angle of vision are completely at the poet's choice. Nevertheless there is a difference between explicitly indicating the expressiveness of an actual landscape and imagining a landscape that shall embody an emotion. This is the difference between most landscape poetry and the poetry of ideal description with which we shall be primar­ ily concerned in this section. The poet imagines a landscape equivalent to his emotion or the poet presents an imaginary landscape not localized as giving rise to the emotion. The ef­ fect of this is to free the poem from the partial fiction that the emotion emerges from an actual landscape. The loss is the loss of the particular connotation—often communally or per­ sonally historical—that particular landscapes possess. As a consequence the history-change motif generally drops out of descriptive poetry or is very much diminished in importance. There is also a middle ground between topographical and ideal-descriptive poems: it is occupied by such poetry as the descriptive parts of Gray's "Elegy" and Goldsmith's "De­ serted Village." In such poetry it is pretended that the imagi­ nary landscape is real. The pretense has led to pointless dis-

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putes about Stoke Poges and the location of Auburn, but its effect is to add to the freedom of the ideal-descriptive the time motif and the idea of community that are a part of topograph­ ical poetry. The element in landscape poetry from which both idealdescriptive and localized-ideal-descriptive poetry grow (if I may be temporarily allowed these barbarisms) is the use of landscape as equivalent to and therefore exploratory and ex­ pressive of feeling. Specific emotion would seem to arise in us as some part of the sensuous-emotional flux of consciousness that specifically demands attention and expression. Since the medium of expression will always be worked at a more reflec­ tive level of consciousness than the original feeling, the lan­ guage used to express that feeling will also explore its nature, and so the emotion expressed is really double—the original feeling demanding expression plus the subsequent emotion attendant upon satisfactory expression. The origin of the process in the sensuous-emotional flux of consciousness is the reason for the sensuous component in art—in the case of de­ scriptive poetry, the sensuousness of described landscape, musical elements, and language. What we follow in all these varieties of descriptive poetry is the sequence of presentation of the landscape. The principle is that the landscape in the particular sequence contrived is equivalent to the structure of the poet's emotion or of the se­ quence of his emotions. By intently and knowledgeably fol­ lowing this sequence we rethink the poet's exploration and expression of his emotion and it becomes our emotion. It is not that he communicates his emotion to us; it is that we, in­ tently rethinking his poem, are able to experience the emotion that he explored and expressed for himself. Poets teach us what we can feel rather than what they feel.1 In one sense descriptive poetry in English must be as old as the language, for we find it frequently as the sensuous equiva­ lent of emotion in Anglo-Saxon poetry. On the other hand, topographical poetry seems to emerge with modal selfconsciousness about 1660, almost precisely the point at which

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the direct expression of personal rather than shared emotion begins to be shunned. The landscape poem is an effective way out here, for whatever individual emotion it may express, the topography is shared. If it can be made expressive, the emo­ tions expressed are, by implication, shared and not private. The topography, external to the poet's mind, seems to be exercising the expressive initiative, even though this is not, as we have seen, the actual case. By the later eighteenth century, however, there is a widespread sense that private emotion ought to be expressed more directly. Yet there has been a break of nearly a century with the poetic conventions for ex­ pressing most private emotion. The results are too complex to be considered here, but one of them is certainly the expres­ sion of personal emotion by reviving lapsed forms and by fleshing out both lapsed and current forms in the poetic lan­ guage of a past with which poets now wish to renew their connections. Hence Johnson, whose own poetry insists on expressing shared emotion, could be impatient with this new taste for old forms: "Dress'd in antique ruff and bonnett— I Ode and elegy and sonnet." Old expressive forms are revived and current forms undergo "descriptive and allegori­ cal" treatment. The landscape poem, already descriptive, is rapidly converted to the more direct expression of personal emotion even when the places remain specific, but it has also shown the way to the new sort of descriptive poem in which the poet is freed from the supposed confines of an actual place: he creates his own landscape. The major eighteenth-century practitioners of the idealdescriptive mode are, of course, Collins and Gray and their influence is everywhere in Chatterton's descriptive poems and passages. They go to literary landscapes for the elements of their imaginary landscapes, hence the "poetic diction" that predominates in their poems. I am not here pretending to es­ tablish the origins of late eighteenth-century poetic diction or any sort of total function for it; I am merely attempting to suggest that it has the particular function in late eighteenthcentury descriptive poetry of buttressing the poet's renewed

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venture at the expression of personal emotion by validating those emotions or at least making them available to readers. This stage, idealized landscapes in traditional diction, pre­ pared the way for poets to write and audiences to read those later poems that invent their diction as they go along. Nor is it, because of being an earlier stage, an inferior stage, for what a subsequent poetry in nontraditional diction gains in fresh­ ness it necessarily loses in resonance. On the other hand, the traditional diction is all too frequently used for a rote parade of descriptive commonplaces analogous to the cliches that so disgusted Johnson in the pastoral poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Chatterton has thirteen poems predominantly in the de­ scriptive mode. Two, "Clifton" and "Elegy, Written at Stan­ ton Drew," are topographical in whole or in part; the rest are of the ideal-descriptive mode. The poems are written from 1768 to within two months of Chatterton's death. The three earliest do not deserve serious discussion: "Where woodbines hang" (summer 1768), "Ode to Miss Hoyland" (1768), and "To the Beauteous Miss Hoyland" (March 1769) are the literary-amatory equivalent of oil painting by the numbers. They are intolerably perfunctory and the evidence suggests that what we have here may be, fortunately for us, only a sample from a heavy production of amatory landscapes man­ ufactured to order, since both of the Hoyland poems were written for John Baker's wooing. Chatterton's first good descriptive poems appear toward the end of the Rowley year in his "Historie of Peyncters" (March 1769), the second item sent to Horace Walpole. After seventeen lines on Saxon painting Chatterton gets down to what was clearly his real concern, interesting Walpole in Rowleyan poetry. Rowley "englyshes" Saxon stanzas on evening and spring by "Ecca Byshoppe of Hereforde yn. D.LVII" and a startling stanza on the landscape of Hell by ' 'Elmar Byshoppe of Selseie... fetyve [elegant] yn Werkes of ghastlienesse." The first two are expressions of joy, the last a curse. The text of the "Historie" gives us some notion of

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Chatterton's very straightforward views on the nature of de­ scriptive poetry. Rowley introduces the poems thus: "Botte nowe wee bee upon Peyncteynge sommewhatte maie be saide of the Poemes of those daies whyche bee toe the Mynde, what Peyncteynge bee toe the Eyne:—the Couloures of the fyrste beynge mo: dureynge." The evening stanza is followed by this critique: "Gif thys Manne han no honde for a Peyncter, he had a Head; a Pycture appearethe ynne eache Lyne, and I wys so fyne an Even sighte mote be drawn." For Chatterton, descriptive poetry is a mode—painting "toe the Mynde," its essence a sequence of irresistably evocative images. The evening stanza is a sequence of country images of changing light that evoke an irrepressible joy in Ecca. Spring is a dance of the seasons and a shepherd in which flowers, lambs, and a brooklet can only join. The parallel between Spring's primrose bed and the shepherd's robe is delicately suggested, as is the shaping idea of life in country spring as a spontaneous dance of communality between man and nature. The sense in Elmar's stanza of being drawn into a landscape of damnation is equally compelling. In all three poems, move­ ment—of changing light, of the dance, of sinking to hell— governs the sequence of images, which indeed appear almost "ynne each lyne." All in all it is difficult to see how Chatter­ ton could have been writing these strong short poems in the same month in which he composed his dreary descriptive rant on the American landscape and Eleanor Hoyland unless it comes from the stimulus of Walpole's early interest in Row­ ley as opposed to the obligation to turn out amatory verse for John Baker. "Clifton" (July 1769) is a very conventional couplet land­ scape poem. The poet stands at Clifton, near Bristol Hotwells, overlooking Bristol and the surrounding countryside from south to east. We move, in his mind, from point to point in this prospect, hearing the thought, memory, or moral elicited from each. The seven scenes, the range of his­ torical allusion from the geological to the immediate past, and the range of tone from the sublime to the homely show no

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discernible pattern, but the long eulogy of the actor Powell concludes the piece in entrenched melancholy. The poet is on the verge of becoming the solitary, melancholy moralist whom we meet again and again in Gray and Collins. For this figure they went back to Milton, but Chatterton does not, I believe, look behind them. The total complex of emotions is perhaps that appropriate to one sort of contemplation of human history, but how much more drab in these conven­ tional trappings than at the peak of the Rowleyan imaginative surge. Language and prosody too are competent, convention­ al, and, in total effect, limp, as though Chatterton were here acting self-consciously the convention of the eighteenthcentury man of melancholy sensibility. In contrast, the "Elegy, Written at Stanton Drew" (27 Oc­ tober 1769) begins as a landscape poem, the melancholy poet brooding on the "druidic" stone circle at Stanton Drew, but turns gradually into an ideal-descriptive ode, a psychomachy of concretely imagined pagan violence set against more vaguely worded erotic memories of the dead Maria. From lines 1-18, the poet tries to suppress erotic memories by imagining gloomy pagan rites, fails, and then freely, though discreetly, indulges those memories. However, beginning with line 19 the function of Stanton Drew changes: a specific human sacrifice is imagined in brutal detail and the priest's knife is then implicitly identified with Death's "doubly armd" dart, which has killed Maria and shall, the poet hopes, kill him. In terms of scene confrontation, the gloom of Stan­ ton Drew could not suppress a memory of past delight, but the imagined sacrifice could bring him to feel his own death approaching by suggesting that Maria and he have been the double victims of a single act of slaughter. The language and prosody of the four scenes—the melan­ choly circle, the chastely erotic Maria, the violent human sac­ rifice, Maria receiving the poet's soul—powerfully reinforce their interplay. Both the external scene and the imagined slaughter are visually vivid, whereas the memory of Maria and the anticipation of death are imprecise and highly

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metaphorical. The opposing dictions reinforce the initial op­ position and subsequent reconciliation of scenes. The prosodic pattern is that of an intricate false Pindaric in which ir­ regularities reflect shifts of scene and mood. Not only do the prosodic units correspond to the major shifts in feeling, but the relative regularity-irregularity of the Pindaric pattern conveys the relative perturbation of each section. It must be noted now that the priest-victim scene is itself implicitly erotic, following the ambiguous violence of sado­ masochistic copulation and orgasm: "The Druid Priest . . . drove the golden knife" Into the palpitating Seat of Life, When rent with horrid Shouts, the distant Vallies ring, The bleeding body bends The glowing Purple stream ascends Whilst the troubled Spirit near Hovers in the steamy Aire Thus the struggle to "Check the rising wild delight" (1. 9) and the subsequent languor following double death would seen to be part of a continuous sexual fantasy. One can see, however, that the vague musings on past joy and future death and the explicit scenes of slaughter have quite distinct roles. The pale scenes can refer directly to erotic memory because they are presented chastely and indirectly; the slaughter scene can be completely explicit and violent because it ostensibly deals with pagan rite. Thus the four scenes are sequential facets of a single fantasy. The gloomy convention of the ideal-descriptive poem has, through subtle dictional and musical strate­ gies, been effectively converted to express the violence of a sexual fantasy first resisted, then wholeheartedly indulged— from fantasized foreplay, through violent copulation and or­ gasm, to postcoital languor. The pattern of scenes and feelings in the "Elegy to Phillips" (October to November 1769) is altogether more conven­ tional, both orderly and quite explicit. The text goes through two stages of revision toward the more formal, controlled,

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and tightened, less personal poem that finally appears in Town and Country (see Works, I, 383-391, textual notes, and II, 1003-1004): it is clear that Chatterton felt he had a strong poem in the works, one worth taking pains with. It is also clear that he is thinking of himself now primarily as a satiric and descriptive poet. The Phoenix notebook—which contains the first hasty draft, written clearly under the immediate im­ pact of the news of his friend's death—contains three satires, two descriptive elegies and the abandoned beginning of a third, all written between 27 and 29 October, and the satiric and descriptive modes very much dominate Chatterton's writings from August 1769 to the end of the year. The first stanza of the Phillips elegy bears out the new de­ scriptive emphasis, and by the fifth line he is in a leafless No­ vember grove, it is evening, and he has found a fit setting for his grief. The problem of adequate praise of Phillips is grace­ fully adapted to the scenic convention by suggesting that only "a double portion of [Phillips's] fire" is sufficient to the task, thus leading into the first long section, in which Phillips's celebration of the four seasons is recalled. Concluding this section, with winter, the poet can return to his grief-filled present to celebrate Phillips's virtues, handled through per­ sonifications with occasional scenic accompaniment. The last nine stanzas of the poem are the strongest: what has been so far merely setting for grief now becomes active as evening advances and the landscape darkens in sympathy with the poet's mind. The poet's "thick'ning gloom," responsive to the loss of Phillips's poetry and virtues, is conveyed as the in­ exorable advance of night in the grove, whose gathering darkness leads the poet to silence, weeping, and the welcom­ ing of death. The strong influence in scene, mode, language, and detail of both Gray's "Elegy" and Collins' ode "To Eve­ ning" is everywhere subtly shaping this effective nocturnal scene (see especially 11. 77-80, 85-96, 105-108), and so it seems likely that the "Elegy" also suggested the heroic quatrain Chatterton has chosen. "Elegy II," "The Complaint," and "Elegy III" are lesser ef-

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forts in the same mode, but "To Miss B sh, of Bristol" (June 1770) strikes a more convincing note: he threatens to go to Africa if she continues unkind. Since we know that he en­ tertained some such plan in August and perhaps as early as May ( Life , p. 429 and note), since there is already, as we shall see, an intense interest in that continent (in the African ec­ logues) , and since in the last stanza he makes no literary ges­ tures toward death, but chooses renunciation, one is inclined to take him more seriously than in "The Complaint." "To Miss B sh" is not a powerful poem, but the reproaches ring true, as though one actual person were speaking to another in a tone of insistent resentment. Chatterton is not entirely at home in these descriptive poems. Except for Ecca's and Elmar's single-impact stanzas and the intensity and interplay of scene and mood in the Stan­ ton Drew elegy, his descriptive poetry is better done when occurring in narrative, dramatic, or persuasive contexts, as it is in the Stonehenge section of "Battle of Hastings II," in (as we shall see) nearly all of the pastoral poems, and in the storm of "An Excelente Balade of Charitie." Note, however, that all of these, except for the African eclogues, are Rowleyan. Chatterton is now searching for a new role as poet. The satiri­ cal side of that role is undertaken, as we have seen, with en­ thusiasm but with limited success. The Collins-Gray side, too, is only occasionally successful artistically; as with the Churchillean poems, he too often doggedly imitates what he admires. The recurrence of a rather limited repertory of bor­ rowed scenic effects—evening, ruins, spring, and so on, each with its worn accoutrements—reinforces this impression. At his best, Chatterton is a poet of bustle, energetic thought and feeling, and attack. One wishes that he might have seen the 1769 New Foundling Hospital for Wit, where Gray's "On Lord Holland's Seat, near Margate, Kent" appeared anonymously. In that poem the landscape tradition is vigorously and wittily turned to scornful satiric anatomy. Chatterton had substantial descriptive power, but self-contained descriptive poetic struc­ tures were not entirely in his walk.

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U.K. OSSIANIC Two obstacles block our understanding of Chatterton's seven Ossianic prose-poems: the difficulty of taking them seriously (Chatterton imitating Macpherson!) and Chatterton's own apparent amusement at the style. The first is the more serious. Just as the middle ages were "dark ages" for Enlightenment historians, so such phenomena as Cowley's lofty reputation or the rage for Ossian tend to be written off by our time as inexplicable lapses into irrational enthusiasms. This, how­ ever, is irresponsible literary history. It is not a question of our own tastes; there we can only give honest testimony. It is more a question, as Collingwood suggests, of the limitations of our historical imaginations. Certain historians, sometimes whole generations of his­ torians, find in certain periods of history nothing intelli­ gible and call them dark ages; but such phrases tell us nothing about those ages themselves, though they tell us a great deal about the persons who use them, namely that they are unable to re-think the thoughts which were fun­ damental to their life.2 The temptation to discuss Chatterton's imitations of Ossian as either unintelligible lapses of taste or hackwork is strengthened by his own contemptuous parodies of the style. Here is a passage from his letter to John Baker of 6 March 1769, written two days after "Ethelgar," his first published Ossianic piece: . . . my friendship is as firm as the white Rocks when the black Waves roar around it [sic ], and the waters burst on its hoary top, when the driving wind ploughs the sable Sea, and the rising waves aspire to the clouds teeming with the rattling Hail; so much for Heroics: to speak in plain English, I am and ever will be your unalterable Friend. Probably about the same time he wrote "Gorthmund," his last Ossianic piece, in "Memoirs of a Sad Dog" he writes a

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fine twenty-line parody showing not only how easily he can catch the Ossianic style (thus proving a third of Dr. Johnson's assertion about that style), but also that he can adapt it to con­ temporary satire and that he has rather a low opinion of Ossian's chief critical apologist. However, there are two serious objections to writing off Chatterton's Ossianics thus easily. First of all, we do not take the mocking of the heroic mode in "The Romance of the Knight" as a repudiation of /Ella or of the powerful shorter heroic poems. Second, Chatterton puts much greater effort into his seven serious Ossianics than into these brief parodies. The notes in Works detail both his ransacking of Heylyn, Camden, Speed, Holinshed, Evan Evans, Ossian, the AngloSaxon Chronicle, Florence of Worcester, Macbeth, Stowe, Sammes, and Verstegan for the materials of these poems and the elaborate reshaping that the materials underwent. It is still possible, of course, that all seven are essentially hackwork, a catering to a current taste that Chatterton himself despised, but this explanation can only be accepted after careful consid­ eration of the pieces themselves. The first objection to taking them as hackwork arises when we consider the extent to which their motivation seems to parallel that of the Rowley poems. They first appear toward the end of the Rowley year, while the poet is still inventing Rowleyan and pre-Rowleyan styles, and they seem to be yet another instance of his urge to imagine the history of British literature, for they are, in effect, a series of poems demonstrat­ ing a pervasive pre-Norman style. He assumes (perhaps seri­ ously) that Macpherson's Ossianic style pervaded all of preNorman Britain. Granting Ossian-Macpherson prior claims to Ireland and the Highlands, he proceeds to embody the style in Saxon ("Ethelgar," "Kenrick," "Cerdick"), Manx ("Godred Crovan"), Welsh (the two versions of "The Hirlas"), and Danish-Saxon ("Gorthmund") instances. The range of geo­ graphic allusion is even broader, taking in the whole of the British Isles, though concentrating, as might be expected, on the area around Bristol.

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The Ossianic style itself is the single constant, though its function and relative importance shifts from piece to piece as his sense of the possibilities of the mode grows. The essence of the style as Chatterton adapts it is the elaboration, by simile, metaphor, and expanding paraphrase, of a basic struc­ tural skeleton. The figures themselves are usually drawn from the somber, rude, awful range of the total natural spectrum. To see the mode most simply at work as style, look back at Chatterton's Ossianic parody in the letter to Baker. The "plain English" skeleton is "I am and ever will be your unal­ terable Friend." The metaphoric fleshing out comes from a storm on the coast: white rocks, black waves roaring, waters bursting, hoary top, driving wind ploughing the sable sea, rising waves aspiring, clouds teeming with rattling hail. Again, the first paragraph of "Ethelgar" contains a Job-like idea: "Tis not for thee, O man! to murmur at the will of the Almighty. . . . Know, O man! that God suffers not the least member of his work to perish, without answering the purpose of their creation. The evils of life, with some, are blessings. . . . Doth the sea of trouble and af­ fliction overwhelm thy soul, look unto the Lord, thou shalt stand firm in the days of temptation." This scriptural moral is transformed by the figures into an ac­ tion of thunders, lightnings, waves, black clouds, a lofty hill, a flying deer, a sable cloud, whistling winds, rolling floods, a hoary wood, lightnings again, wind, a wolf, the Severn, nodding forests, St. Michael's Hill, sheep, a swain, beams of light, morning, the plant of death, the wound of the sword, Kinwulph Hill, waves, and a final unmoved rock—all of this in seventeen lines. A final, somewhat less ornate instance, which is more characteristic of Chatterton's late Ossianic style: in the opening to "The Hirlas II," Chatterton's Ossianizing of Evan Evans's translation of an actual Welsh poem.3 Evans's opening reads, "When the dawn arose, the shout was given." Of this Chatterton has made "Ere the sun was seen

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on the brow of the mountain, the clanging shields were heard in the valley. . . ." Hardly a thought or an act is allowed to go unelaborated by figure or amplification, and the particular range of imagery is always Ossian's somber range. This style, then, is Chatterton's Ossianic medium; it changes very little in the course of the seven Ossianic pieces. Yet subjects, tech­ niques, and structural principles change radically and, as a re­ sult, the style moves gradually from stage center in the early pieces, whose raison d'etre is the style itself, to the secondary function of a means toward particular literary effects. How­ ever minimal our taste for the style, the demonstrable devel­ opment is a clear-cut illustration of how Chatterton goes about selecting and solving a closely related series of literary problems. Throughout these Ossianic pieces, the subject is twofold: an action, usually heroic, and an historical-geographical con­ tent—allusions to names, places, and events that serve to tie the pieces to the island and its history. The general tendency in both aspects is toward increasing complexity. There is, on the other hand, no clear-cut direction among the shaping principles employed; old and new formal solutions unite the constant style to the expanding subject. The forms do indeed grow more complex, but this is a consequence of the elabora­ tion of subject. "Ethelgar" (March 1769), the first Ossianic piece, is an apologue illustrating the scriptural moral already quoted. In subject it is a saint's life with geographical and historical allu­ sions suggesting seventh-century south Wessex. Yet the life is little more than trelliswork for the style. Chatterton might expect surprise at Saxon poetry so like Ossian's; he clearly sensed the enthusiasm for a northern Homeric style in the current rage for Ossian and apparently expected a like patri­ otic enthusiasm for a Bristolian heroic mode. It is not, in fact, difficult to reenact what Ossian's admirers must have felt. If we add local pride to our own earliest experience of the trans­ lated primitive splendor of Beowulf, with its tantalizing hints at geographical and historical specificity, we have caught the

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response aimed at. If we can add to this a sense of Chatterton's youthful bravura in bringing off the style, we are at the essence of "Ethelgar." "Kenrick" (April 1769) is "Ethelgar" in battle dress, the ac­ tion a still slighter scaffolding for the style, but the ties to history tightened. As the second Wessex king, Kenrick had to have fought Britons and two of his four chiefs have the names of the fourth and eighth kings in the Wessex succession. Also, the minstrel Costan (apparently a Briton) suggests the place of such poems in Saxon society and, possible, how a Celtic style comes to be used in a Saxon poem. Again, though, it is the somber, ancient style, verified by allusions, which is the center of attention. The gratification of literary-historic curiosity is clearly a part of the response aimed at in all seven Ossianics, a response, in effect, to encrusted patina and its connotations. In subsequent pieces, however, the trelliswork of heroic action and of historical-geographic anchoring begins to take on interests of its own; a mode appears within which the style becomes less a matter of virtuoso bravura, more a matter of medium. "Cerdick" (May 1769) is Chatterton's imaginary account of the establishment of the Wessex succession. The incidents are presented in four stages, thus adding three episodes to an opening much like that of "Kenrick." Two battles are Chat­ terton's inventions and the four chiefs' names are those of var­ ious later Anglo-Saxon kings, but the tying of the action to an established historical fact—the Wessex succession—gives the piece a more focused interest and a greater historic veri­ similitude than we find in either "Ethelgar" or "Kenrick." To place the second battle at Dorchester is logical: the first Wessex kings are mopping up southern pockets of British resist­ ance. Also, Chatterton's odd spelling Doranceastre perhaps hints at a folk etymology mentioned in Camden. 4 To sum up, action has complicated and "history" has come to a sharper focus in this third Ossianic. The stylistic flourishes are more tightly wound into the action; this piece is something more than a chance to show off the style. The reader is supposed to

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respond most strongly, I believe, to the history. The sup­ posed authenticity of the style would tend to strengthen the credit given to the history, for the action has little interest in itself. With "Godred Crovan" (August 1769) we shift from Wessex to Manx Ossianic; the history is drawn wholesale from Camden and Holinshed, with further names from four other historians and from Evan Evans and even Ossian (see Works, II, 988-992). As befits the Isle of Man, the history shows Cel­ tic, Saxon, and Norwegian strands. The subject is Godred Crovan's two-day battle in 1066 for mastery of the isle. The battle itself is divided into three stages and, to further compli­ cate the structure, a British minstrel Tatwallin sings the his­ tory of three other battles in the interludes between these stages. One of the battles of which he sings provides the concealed-force strategy by which Godred wins his battle. The structure is most clearly understood in outline: Godred assembles his chiefs (11. 1-22); Tatwallin sings the Battle of Stamford Bridge (11. 22-65); the indecisive first day of Godred's battle is fought in two stages (11. 65-157); Tatwallin sings two songs—Wecca's victory and Hengist's victory over Cucurcha (11. 157-231); the second day of battle is decisive— Godred follows Wecca's strategy and defeats Raignald (231279). "Godred Crovan" is making more complex demands on our attention than most readers will be willing to give it. The action has, for the first time, suspense: will Godred win? Will the strategy work? There is also the political-military his­ tory of four peoples intermingled on the Isle of Man in ac­ counts of four battles, the central one in three stages, the combatants in all four needing sorting out, the time ranging from Hengist to 1066. All of this illustrates, furthermore, a complex facet of Chatterton's invented literary history of England: the style is pre-Norman Ossianic, the poem is com­ posed by a Manx bard, the poems that occur within it are sung by the British bard Tatwallin, though they concern heroes of all four nations, and the occasion for Tatwallin's singing illustrates the function of pre-Norman heroic poetry.

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The style is as Ossianic as that of "Ethelgar," but all of the flourishes function within the action so that all of this freight of history and literary history can be carried. The mannerisms of Ossianic granted, one must recognize that here it is medium; it is no longer a matter of figures of speech tenu­ ously attached to subject. For the reader who can grant Chatterton what he wanted to do here and the close attention that the piece demands, "Godred Crovan" brilliantly subsumes its multiple aims within the elaborate arrangement of its action. I take it that by November 1769—and it should be noted that the last Rowley poem was probably written half a year before this—Chatterton was sufficiently involved in the pos­ sibilities of this pre-Norman, Celtic heroic mode to attempt Welsh versions using the actual structures of Welsh poetry. I do not think it can be established that Chatterton believed or disbelieved in the authenticity of Macpherson's Ossian, but Evan Evans's translations from Welsh poetry were clearly au­ thentic; unlike Macpherson, Evans published his originals with his translations. Both of Chatterton's Welsh Ossianics, the two versions of "The Hirlas" (November 1769; January 1770), borrow their forms directly from Evans's translation of "Hirlas" 5 and the second of them is an item-by-item Ossianizing of that poem. In "The Hirlas I," though, Chatterton invents, with help from the historians (see Works , II, 1010-1011), an eleventh-century Welsh raid on Saxon Bristol. There is, however, no narrative of this battle. The borrowed form is that of an ode in which the hirlas, a drinking horn, is passed in turn to six Welsh warriors as their deeds in the vic­ tory at Bristol are celebrated. The shaping principle used to bring Ossian and Chatterton's history of Bristol together is closest to the celebratory rhythmic structures of such poems as "Songe toe Ella" and "Parlyamente of Sprytes." There, however, the repetitive structure was intended to evoke surges of admiration for Ella and Canynge. Here, I believe, Chatterton's interest and ours is focused on Bristol history, and the response is analogous to our natural curiosity about seeing ourselves (our history, in this case) as others see us.

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The Bristol we came to know so intimately in the Rowley writings—the bridge, the castle, Kynwulph-hylle—has be­ come "the island of castles," and we recall that walled eleventh-century Bristol would indeed have been surrounded by water—the Avon, the Frome, and west Castle Ditch. The Saxons whom we have been accustomed to think of as the in­ habitants are here "the new lords of the Bridges," for in this Welsh raid the British retake what they dimly remember was once their own; Britons were once "lords of the Bridges." The powerful effect of perceiving all of this dim past through the strange fenestration of the authentic Welsh form is, I think, the response sought by the poet. It is a powerful piece of imagining. Chatterton's final Ossianic poem, "Gorthmund" (probably summer 1770), recounts a Wessex-Mercian triumph over a villainous Dane after whom the piece is titled. Since the narra­ tion is given largely from his point of view, it is the first Ossianic in which a substantial interest in character is generated. The structure of the narrative is again rhythmic and this time the repetitions arouse suspense. The Dane Gorthmund, asleep, "the blood of the slain . . . still on his cruel hand," hears the accusing howls of two of his victims and starts up, still sleeping, to reveal by his denials that he has murdered Hubba and raped and murdered Locabara (11. 1-22). His shield bearer wakens him from his nightmare, he realizes that he has been dreaming, and he turns again to sleep (11. 23-31). The howls again pervade his dream, predicting now his imminent defeat at Saxon hands and the burning of his army in the wicker image of the Saxon deity Tewisk. Still sleeping, he again starts up in terror (11. 31-52). His shield bearer again awakens him, his chiefs gather round, and a scouting party is deployed. They report that Rowcester sleeps and insist to Gorthmund that the Saxons will no longer oppose the Danes (11. 52-71). The celebrating Danes dance until morning around their bound Saxon captives; at dawn they see a dark cloud on the mountain and expect a storm (11. 71-84). The cloud, however, is a Mercian-Saxon army under Segowald

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and Sigebert. It descends on the Danes as they are killing their Saxon captives, catching them in utter confusion; the Danes are beaten and routed (11. 84-106). Gorthmund scorns to fly; Segowald challenges him to single combat and fells him. "As the shades of death [dance] before his eyes" he hears for the last time the now exultant shrieks of Hubba and Locabara (11. 106-133). This violent piece is the climax of Chatterton's Ossianic experiments as Ailla was the climax of the Rowleyan impulse. Here again Chatterton has turned to Shakespeare: with the blood-stained hands, the guilty nightmares, the ghostly prophecies, the attacking army mistaken for a cloud, the final battle, and the death fight with Segowald, Macbeth is being used as Othello was used in Ailla. Occasionally even the lan­ guage is startlingly close. Chatterton notes that the Danes bound their captives to stakes and shot them to death with ar­ rows. Macbeth says, "They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly.. . ." (V, vii). The action of "Gorthmund" is compounded by radically reworking two chapters in John Speed's Historie of Great Britaine. Here too, however, there is a Macbeth connection. Banquo was thane of Loqhuabre (cf. Locabara), and in his discus­ sion of that county Camden treats the depredations of the Danes and Macbeth's murder of Banquo. On the facing page in Britannia we read, "Hard by is Nardin . . . where in a Peninsula there stood a fort of mighty height . . . formerly held by the Danes" (cf. "Nardin of the forest," 1. 17). The thickness and confusion of geographical and historical allu­ sions and source is too complex to treat here (see Works, II, 1130-1132), but the critical point is that Chatterton has in­ vented an action and a rhythmic, foreboding structure for that action that takes us into the mind of valiant, treacherous Gorthmund and strengthens the echoes from Macbeth. If any subject asks for the Ossianic mode, it is this one, and, oddly enough, there is a loch named Ossian in the Loqhuabre area. Enough said, I think, to prove that whatever they may be to us, Chatterton's Ossianics were for him neither joke nor

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hackwork. The effort that has gone into them (both the elabo­ rate reworking of multiple sources and the increasing com­ plexity of the literary effects sought) and the close analogy to the Rowleyan impulse toward imagining a convincing liter­ ary past argue strongly against such conclusions. That Chatterton had no trouble getting them promptly published, Macpherson having created a market, does not mean that they are hackwork. However, it probably does suggest a good deal about why Rowley was dropped in May 1769, while the Ossianics continued right to the end. Chatterton needed an audience and some remuneration for his writing; when a particular sort of work proves unlikely to get him what he wants, he drops it, regardless of the strength of his imaginative involvement. Macpherson's Ossian had sug­ gested the possibility of a pre-Norman heroic mode and the seven pieces are Chatterton's increasingly elaborate and effec­ tive exploration of that idea. The method used—to pick up hints and from them imaginatively generate works, trans­ forming all in the process—is precisely the ability noted, with mixed admiration and disapproval, by Alexander Catcott in his response to the Rowleyan writings: Chatterton "would catch hints and intelligence from short conversations, which he would afterwards work up, and improve, and cover in such a manner that an attentive and suspicious person only could trace them back to the source from whence he derived them" (Life, p. 306). It was this gift that got Chatterton both the praise and the blame of his contemporaries and of subse­ quent generations. The general direction of the Ossianic works has clearly been toward increasing complexity of both subject and liter­ ary effect. We have moved from bravura displays of style to actions thick with historical and literary-historical implication and to echoic, rhythmic structures seeking complex responses in us. Suspense in "Godred Crovan" and "Gorthmund" and characterization in "Gorthmund" have strengthened our in­ terest in the actions themselves. We have seen Chatterton move from the straight narrative lines of "Ethelgar," "Ken-

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rick," and "Cerdick" to the variously manipulated actions of "Godred Crovan," "The Hirlas I," and "Gorthmund." We must now consider the implications of these Ossianic devel­ opments for our understanding of Chatterton and of the Ossianic taste of his time. Ossian was something more than claptrap to so many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sensibilities because he represented the claims of a neglected, dimly perceived past that Gray tried to catch in his Norse and Celtic odes, that Col­ lins celebrated in his "Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland," and that many lesser poets and critics were striving to articulate. What now seems most ersatz in Ossianic is the constant harping on nature's starkest, most somber forms and movements—rocks, mountains, wolves, trees, storms, the sea, darkness, dawn, heavy clouds—and on their human equivalents in warfare, the hunt, and fierce at­ tachments and hatreds. The events are generally savage, the similes awesome. They are, we feel, being asked to carry a load of significance that they cannot really bear. I think, how­ ever, that, sympathetic or not, we can understand this Ossianic appetite and make some sense of it. Actions and images suggest together that there was once a time when man was at one with a simpler, starker natural world, a time when human passions were illustrated, echoed, and heightened by the natural world men lived in. If this reading is correct, it argues, in turn, that the later eighteenth century was feeling a loss of connection with nature. The interrelated growths of technology, cities, and trade were radically altering the human environment. There is something Ossianic, perhaps, in RobinsonJefFers. At any rate, in Chatterton's day, there is a hunger or nostalgia for something in the process of being lost, and it is not limited to those poets we sometimes call preRomantic, for it is nowhere more strongly expressed than in Goldsmith's conservative "Deserted Village." Such specu­ lations as these are not, certainly, new; they fit perhaps too smoothly into our current understanding of the early manifes­ tations of English literary Romanticism. If they make any ad-

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vance it is, I should think, in their attempt to show why the very qualities in the Ossianic style that most put us off may well be those that were most eloquent for the later eighteenth century. PASTORAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE HEROIC It has been recognized from the beginnings of pastoral criti­ cism, but in our time and most provocatively by William Empson, 6 that pastoral is a mode of thought, that it strives to understand human—usually urban—complexity by reducing it to basic truths through the distancing of a broader, simpler perspective, and that, on the other hand, it has particular affinities with the heroic. It would be difficult to find pastoral that more clearly fulfills all of these characteristics than the four minstrels' songs in Ailla \ we have already considered their function of bringing the fated heroic love of ^lla and Birtha to common scale and thereby highlighting its human essence. We have noted also that the second minstrels' song managed to consider that love from a philosophic perspective without losing this touch with common truths. The Ailla pastorals cast no light on the ultimate cause of the tragedy. Pastoral can deal sympathetically with jealousy arising from preference, rejection, or deceit in love but not with the imagi­ nary "wounds yn rennome" engendered by the distortions of heroic obsession. In this section we are to consider these minstrels' songs and Chatterton's subsequent pastorals as discrete poems, and this brings us to a particular structural tendency of pastoral: its impulse is didactic, but that impulse expresses itself in mi­ metic forms. Though it always teaches, frequently quite explicitly, nevertheless it teaches through fictional struc­ tures—actions, dialogues, complaints, states of quite particu­ lar minds—rather than through structures of ideas. Pastoral is not unfriendly to reflection or argument, but it insists on rec­ ognizing truth's roots in the immediacy of shared experience. The formal result of this insistence is that pastoral tells its

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truth in a context of action, thought, and speech. Pastoral is not pastoral without nymphs and swains, whatever they are called, whatever their vocation or station. Pastoral style will vary as vocation and station vary, but the informing princi­ ples in the mode will be immediately mimetic and ultimately didactic, even when we take pleasure for their own sakes in the actions or speeches of the nymphs and swains. The pastoral audience, on the other hand, has no nymphs or swains in it; there is always an implied distance between us and the characters. We know they are pastoral, moving in­ stinctively among ultimate truths, but except when the con­ vention is being used with what Empson calls double irony (nymphs and swains primly conscious of their knowledge of ultimate truths), they do not know this. For them there is no other way to behave, speak, or think. The structural princi­ ples we find, then, will have to include both didactic ends and minetic means. If Chatterton wrote the 1764 prose letter from Fullford, he is Chatterton's first swain and his first pastoral is both mock pastoral and Chatterton's most complex pastoral, for Fullford writes with the double irony of Empson's first degree of comic primness. He moves among common folk; he knows how they like to be buried; he knows his graveyard above and below ground to the inch and is primly aggrieved when his betters officiously invade his turf. Most important, his pastoral intimacy with the ways his world wags enables him to see immediately that the going game is "to get ζ profitable Job out of the Church" under cover of any patched-up pre­ text—"Decency, Convenience, or the like." The minstrels' songs in Ailla are doing something almost as complex as this within the tragedy, but without the added dimension of comic irony. Chatterton would not, I believe, have thought of Fullford as a pastoral figure. When eighteenth-century writers work consciously within the pastoral "kind" they allude in some way to traditional pastoral—the diction we associate with the words nymph and swain, the countrified diction of self-con-

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sciously "native" pastoral, the elegant simplicity that Pope demands and exemplifies in his Golden Age pastorals, the ec­ logue format that organized the poem as monologue or dialogue with a minimum of explicatory narrative. Empson extends the concept convincingly beyond this usage, but by doing so he often sees the pastoral principle at work where the authors would not have seen it. Of the major works dealt with in Some Versions of Pastoral, perhaps only The Beggar's Opera would have been recognized by its author as having strong pastoral elements, and even that perception would most likely stem from Swift's original suggestion that Gay write a Newgate pastoral. Gay was writing mock pastoral in the conventional sense in The Shepherd's Week and his town eclogues, and in both he used both eclogue format and con­ stant allusion to earlier pastoral from Theocritus on. I use the word format to refer to the dialogic or monologic manner of conducting a pastoral action. I should like to re­ serve form, structure, shaping idea, and the like to refer to the formal ideas that shape individual poems and that usually, in Chatterton's pastorals, make use of some kind of eclogue format as their mimetic pattern. The format may also, of course, be used for nonpastoral poems, as it is in Canynge's "The Worlde." The simplest way to understand the eclogue format's usefulness is to realize that it is brief closet drama, to be read but not acted, yet having sufficient dramatic qualities that we are led to enact the dialogue in our minds. Most of what I have said so far would apply to pastoral and mock pastoral of the whole century. In 1742, however, there appeared a work that further channeled Chatterton's pastoral, William Collins' Persian Eclogues, Written originally for the En­ tertainment of the Ladies of Tauris. And now first translated, Sr. Even this long title embodies a Rowley-like pretext, and most of Collins's preface could stand, mutatis mutandis, as prologue not only to Chatterton's Rowleyan and African eclogues, but to all of Rowley. . . . each Nation hath a peculiarity . . . to distinguish it from the rest of the World. . . . the Style of my Coun-

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try men is as naturally Strong and Nervous, as that of an Arabian or Persian is rich and figurative. There is an Elegancy and Wildness of Thought which recommends all their Compositions. . . . If any of these Beauties are to be found in the following Eclogues, I hope my Reader will consider them as an Argument of their being Original. I received them at the Hands of a Mer­ chant, who had made it his Business to enrich himself with the Learning, as well as the Silks and Carpets of the Persians. . . . As to the Eclogues themselves, they give a very just View of the Miseries and Inconveniencies, as well as the Felicities, that attend one of the finest Countries in the East. The Time of the Writing them was probably in the Beginning of the Sha Sultan Hosseyn's Reign. . . . The merchant reminds us of Canynge, and the teases and boasts about exoticism probably give a fairly accurate notion of how Chatterton hoped his own geographical and chrono­ logical exoticisms in the African and Rowleyan eclogues might be taken. The eclogue format, of course, could come from Collins, Pope, Gay, and a hundred others, but if we consider Chatterton's pastorals (excluding, for the moment, the mock pastorals) in the groups in which they appear, it seems possible to mark the point after which Collins's titles, his idea of exotic pastoral, and even the forms of particular pastorals begin to make their influence felt. We should re­ member also, in connection with the fourth group, that Col­ lins's eclogues were reissued in 1757 as Oriental Eclogues. Chatterton's pastorals emerged in these groups: 1. Four "Mynstrelles Songes" in Ailla; eclogue format in first, second, and fourth, written c. December 1768 to Janu­ ary 1769. 2. Canynge's "The Warre"; not in eclogue format; written March 1769. 3. Rowley's three "Eclogues" and "Elinoure andjuga"; all

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in eclogues format; first three titled, like Collins's poems, "Eclogue the First," etc.; written c. May 1769. 4. Three "African Eclogues" and "An African Song"; first three in eclogue format, last in eclogue-aria format; written December 1769 to July 1770. Collins's influence on the last two groups is strong, but it need not be posited to account for anything in the first five poems, whose discrete characteristics we shall now consider. In the first of the minstrels' songs in Ailla, Robynne, urged by nature, tries to seduce Alice. She deftly turns seduction toward marriage, thus fulfilling the urges of both nature and lore. Folksong quatrains and country diction reinforce our awareness of the level of truth at which we are thinking. The idea that nature's urgings are most happily answered in faithful love is thus embodied in a pastoral action conducted entirely as a gradually resolved love debate. The similar lesson of the second minstrels' song, that mar­ riage is essential to human happiness and to the full realization of male and female natures, is explicitly stated in dialogue be­ tween the troubled questioning minstrels and the "clergyoned" [learned] answerer. The simplicity of the question­ ers leads no deeper than the quarrel between their response to budding spring and fruitful autumn and the vague sense of in­ completeness or care that they cannot escape. The learned re­ flectiveness of the answerer moves freely among sensations, things, and ideas. Elynoure, in the third minstrel's song, is at the same level of thought as the two questioners: "I stylle wanted somethynge, but whatte ne could telle." Yet her world is one of domestic joys and hence her diction is homely. The void has been filled by marriage and all her household chores are there­ fore pleasures. Her joy is conveyed also by the lilt of the anapestic line, used here within a traditional folk stanza. The central idea is expressed in her first sentence: "Whatte pleas­ ure ytt ys to be married!" The simple action, dominated by Elynoure's happy monologue, which ruminantly savors that

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pleasure, is framed by her contented knitting and by Lord Thomas's return. "So wee leave hem bothe kyndelie embracynge" delicately embodies the moral. The poem is struc­ tured as the simplest of affirmative actions. The eloquent simplicity of diction and the intriguing musi­ cal ambiguity of the fourth minstrel's song, the lovely roundelay that Birtha does not really hear, have been dis­ cussed by better critics—Keats, Saintsbury, Meyerstein, Bronson—and the literary sources here brought into play have been thoroughly canvassed (see Works, II, 933-934). Birtha's coming loss of Ailla is acted out in the monologue of a damsel who mourns her swain. Merriment is no longer thinkable—only grief. She remembers, like Gray's elegist, the beauty, vigor, activity, and celebration of him who now lies a cold corpse. The raven, the death-owl, the white moon, and the willow surround his stillness and speak her grief. She lays barren flowers on his grave, for no saint thought to save her from cold chastity and barrenness. She will, then, train briars round his grave, and she turns from saints to elfin fairies, the fen fires their corpses candles, beseeching them to bleed away her life "wythe acorne-coppe and thorne," for she scorns all life's good, its dancing and feasting. Water witches shall bear her to her dead true love. The whole direction of her thought is emphasized by the single, final narrative line: "Thos the damselle spake, and dyed." The movement toward death of a mind bereaved of love shapes the poem. The longing felt by the complaining minstrels, the longing fulfilled for happy Elynoure, was here about to be fulfilled and so now is made the more achingly empty. Thus the four songs build on each other and give pastoral echo to /ilia's and Birtha's love and fate, while at the same time maintaining their wholeness and individual identity.7 "The Warre" makes a unique use of the pastoral mode, though it is not in eclogue format. The speaker is no swain but the learned Abbot John, and he addresses himself first to an heroic figure from Bristol's past, Robert Consul of Gloucester (d. 1147). In the first stanza "Warres glumm

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[gloomy] Pleasaunce" withers "Hosbandrie," whose grief is suggested in a complex and awkward metaphor, in which an experiment with the possibilities of elaborating a personifica­ tion has got Chatterton into rather muddy water. The middle stanza, which asks Gloucester if a bloody battlefield is not like "toe an Helle," seems at first to have nothing to do with pastoral or husbandry, but from this comparison follows the strongly pastoral conclusion. Ye Shepster Swaynes who the Ribibblea kenne; Ende the thyghte" Daunce ne Ioke uponne the Spere; In Ugsommnessec Warre moste bee dyghte toe Menne; Unselinessd attendeth Honourewere/' Quaffe your swote Vernagef and atreeted Beere.8 This conclusion is the best poetry in the piece, especially in the contrast between pastoral dance to the fiddle and "the thyghte Daunce" of war. In effect Abbot John uses the shepherds to tell the heroic Robert of Gloucester that the swains' ultimate truths—fiddle, dance, wine, cider, beer—are truer than Gloucester's ultimate truths—war and the pursuit of honor. The poem then is a sophisticated persuading monologue, but John is no swain: he is performing the func­ tion of the philosophic minstrel in the third minstrel's song. The truth he has to tell oddly anticipates, both in the connec­ tion between war and last things and in the last line, Hardy's "Channel Firing," in which "Instead of preaching forty year," My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, "I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer." Of the four Rowleyan eclogues of May 1769, all but "Ec­ logue the Third" see war from the sidelines. The four minstrels' songs in Ailla brought heroic love into the context of broader human experience, seeing love as basic to human b'compact, orderly, tight c terror "fiddle d Unhappiness e place of Honour f Sweet vintage, wine, cider g beer extracted from corn

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nature and necessary to happiness. In contrast the speakers of the three Rowleyan eclogues on war, following the lead of "The Warre," have only one thing in common: all stand to lose more by war than heroes could gain. Elinoure and Juga foresee the deaths of their husbands; the affluent swains of "Eclogue the First" lose their farms and their closest kin; Nygelle of "Eclogue the Second," too young to fight in the Crusade himself, fears for his warring father. I shall try to show that each of them sees war in some context unavailable to those caught up in war's "thyghte Daunce," thus justifying Chatterton's choice of the eclogue format with its pastoral suggestions and our reading them as versions of pastoral. Roberte and Raufe of "Eclogue the First" are, to be sure, shepherds, and we can guess their pastoral concerns, but the positions in life of Elinoure, Juga, and Nygelle give them a pastoral ingenuousness that allows us to think of them as nymphs and swain and to acknowledge, therefore, their right to bring war to the pastoral test. "Elinoure and Juga" was the only Rowleyan work pub­ lished in London before Chatterton's death. In it Rowley goes back to the events of 1461 already touched on in "Four Letters on Warwyke." The influences are multiple (see Works, II, 971). The structure is perhaps unprofitably symmetrical: nar­ rative introductory stanza, stanza of complaint by Elinoure, three stanzas of complaint by Juga, stanza of complaint by Elinoure, narrative concluding stanza. Juga's speech is the center of the poem, and its central stanza is the strongest poetry. No mo a the miskynetteb shalle wake the morne, The minstrelle daunce, good cheere, and morryce plaie; No mo the amblynge palfrie and the home, Shall from the Iesselc rouze the foxe awaie: I'll seke the foreste alle the lyve-longe daie: All nete amenge the gravde chirche glebe" wyll goe, And to the passante6 spryghtes lecture' mie tale of woe. a more

b Small

d churchyard

e passing

bagpipe

c bush, f relate

hedge

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It would be difficult to imagine a poet catching the essence of the opening of Gray's "Elegy" more closely and yet turning it so completely to his own purposes. The rest of "Elinoure and Juga" is not up to this: a baggage of conventional pastoral diction is frequently inappropriate or wooden. The grieving maiden in the Ailla roundelay was able to express her grief through conventional trappings of woe, intensifying our sense of it, but Elinoure and Juga seem self­ consciously literary in their anticipations of death. Also, the elaborate paralleling of their cases reinforces the unnecessary symmetry of the poem and mechanizes their grief: "The notte browne Ellynor to Juga fayre"; the simultaneously dropping tears; the serial anticipations of deathe; Syrre Robynne and Syrre Rycharde; the simultaneous news of the deaths, after which, still functioning as a team, they "Yelled theyre leathalle knelle; sonke in the waves and dyde." Chatterton is not yet at ease with Collins's predominant formal influence, but he has tried, with dialogue and the two framing stanzas of narra­ tive, to show the heroic, bloody battle at St. Albans from the broader human perspective of young wives. They are neither rustic nor low-born (none of Chatterton's pastoral speakers after the Ailla songs are actual rustics). However, this was a recognized liberty in both the criticism and practice of the time, and it underlies the truth of Empson's apergu: the pastoral perspective need not be "low"; the only requirement is its superior access to broad human truth. "Eclogue the First" is still closer to Collins's "Eclogue the Fourth" and though Roberte and Raufe have been prosperous shepherds, have lost all, and have lost also a son and a father respectively, the danger of a too neatly paralleled grief is partly skirted by the intense detail in which they recall the country delight of their now ruined estates. Roberte's and Raufe's dialogue needs an introductory stanza of narrative but none of conclusion, for the worst has happened before the poem opens. Their special truth is the loss that even an honorable and necessary war (11. 1-4) brings to the land: all that makes it fruitful and delightful is

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destroyed. The eclogue is shaped to bring this loss out, espe­ cially in lines 21-40. We know from his many descriptive poems and passages that the countryside was important to Chatterton; the poem is richer in the sense of loss conveyed than is "Elinoure and Juga." "Eclogue the First" gives war­ fare from the point of those closest to the agricultural essence of England, and for them even the best of wars is a calamity. Roberte's final lines sum it up rather belletristically, but the emphasis is on the land. "Eclogue the Second" is one of the finest Rowley poems. Since it espouses the most heroic view of war and since young Nygelle, the speaker, is a potential warrior, strong arguments will be needed to bring it within our working definition of pastoral. Except for the final six-line narrative stanza, the ec­ logue proceeds by presenting a crusade as imagined by the anxious son of one of Richard's men. In the first eight lines of each stanza Nygelle imagines the battle in rich heroic detail; one has only to recall the problems of the Hastings poems to see how far Chatterton's poetry has advanced. Yet at the end of each stanza is a variant of this couplet refrain: "Sprytes of the bleste! and everich Seyncte ydedde [dead], I Poure owte your Pleasaunce on mie Fadres heade—" Splendid narrative regularly punctuated by filial anxiety, then, is the rhythmic pattern of Nygelle's speech. Without the refrain, this would be an heroic poem: Nygelle sees the crusade as Chatterton had wished to see Hastings. With the refrain and with the final stanza telling of his reunion with his father— Sykea Nigel sed, whan from the bluie Sea, The Upswolb Sayle dyd daunce before his Eyene: Swefte as the Wishe, hee toe the Beeche dyd flee, And founde his Fadre steppeynge from the bryne.— the subject becomes insistently the son's anxious love for his father, much strengthened by his pride in him. War is thus brought to the perspective of filial love, a profounder truth, b Swollen

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but not an unfriendly truth. Nygelle imagines the battle with the Saracens as only a boy's romantic imagination could. I would suggest that in the larger Rowleyan world, the roman­ tic color of medieval Bristol is likewise heightened by the filial relationship of Rowley to Canynge that is at its heart. Chatterton's longing for a father gives meaning and power to both imaginations. 8 Nygelle is a swain, then, not because he judges battle by deeper truths, but because his particular truth—love for his father and the pride and anxiety it brings—intensifies the heroism of war beyond what any war­ rior could entertain. It is the boy's imagination of the color and glory of war—a song of innocence getting at a partial truth available only to innocence. To point up the fine poetry in "Eclogue the Second" would be to quote the poem entire. The stanzas on Richard's war fleet, the landing, Richard's triumph, and the victory and re­ turn are, for me, the strongest, but in a context of steady ex­ cellence. Scenes of descriptive power— Oundes a synkeynge Oundes upon the harde Ake b riese; The Water Slughornes c wythe a swotye Cleme, d Conteke e the dynynge f Ayre and reche the Skies. The Gule g depeyncted h Oares from the black tyde, Decorn 1 wyth fonnes J rare doe shemrynge ryse; Upswalynge k doe heie 1 shewe ynne drierie Pride. . . . The Fyghte is wonne: Kynge Richarde Master is, The Englonde Banner kisseth the hie Ayre. . . .— blend with lines of quiet wit—"The waylynge [decreasing] Mone doth fade before hys Sonne. ..." The Moslem crescent is fading before Richard's dawn. At the conclusion the father's heroism and the son's pride, love, and anxiety have "waves d Sound e red 'devices

f Iivid e confuse,

contend with

h painted k rising

high

C musical instrument 'sounding 'carved 'they

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joined to produce a protest of ineffability for once powerful: "Lette thyssen [those] Menne who haveth Sprite of Loove— I Bethynck untoe hemselves [themselves] how mote [might] the meetynge proove." Words will not be adequate, but it is the preceding pressure of precisely worked words that induces us to imaginatively reenact the meeting. "Eclogue the Third" is weaker poetry than the second, but its structure is more complex. It leaves war for the first time in the Rowley eclogues to ask the basic pastoral question. We are back to the Manne, Womanne, and priest of the first minstrels' song in Ailla, but the argument is not love. The shaping idea is that of a dialogue in which a nymph and a swain question a priest about social inequality and are an­ swered from his wiser perspective: nymphs and swains lead full, carefree lives, whereas "the manne of myghte / Is tempest-chaft; hys woe greate as hys forme— I Thie self a flourette of a small accounte, I Wouldst harder felle [feel] the Wynde, as hygher thee dydste mount—" Presumably the rus­ tics know this in their bones and feelings, but only the priest Syr Rogerre can word it for them. He mediates between their embodied pastoral truth and the rationale for social difference. In this respect "The Warre," with its learned Abbot Johne, and the second of the minstrels' songs in s£Ua, with its philo­ sophic minstrel, are like "Eclogue the Third." Syr Rogerre, building from what nymph and swain know, draws his illus­ trations from farming and from nature: death as harvest home for great and small, the flower and the grass, trees and flowers in a storm. The moral he points is the conclusion to the inner debate in Gray's "Elegy," though the emphasis here is on contentment rather than on unrealized potential. Note par­ ticularly the wealthy pomp of Dame Agnes's grave, the priest's homely sermon on "th' inevitable hour," and the swain's version of the former vigor and activity of "The rude Forefathers of the hamlet." Rowley's introductory stanza makes the pastoral claim to truth:

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Wouldst thou kenn Nature in her better parte, Goe, serche the Loggesa and Bordelsb of the Hynde; Gyfec theye have anied itte ys roughemade arte, Inne heme you see the blakied' forme of kynde:g It also promises a prosodic experiment: ". . . rede thys, whych Iche [I] dysportynge [sporting] pende, I Gif nete [naught] besyde; yttes rhyme maie ytte commende—" Row­ ley and Syr Rogerre speak in the iambic Rowleyan stanza, a prosodic analogy to their learning. Nymph and swain speak in predominant anapests and though their rhyme schemes and stanza patterns are sometimes quite intricate, Chatterton gets the effect of folk rhythms, perhaps because the stanzas are composites of simpler folk forms. There is often this sort of prosodic decorum in Chatterton: iambic full stanzas for the dignified and learned, earthier rhythms and stanza forms for the folk. We see it clearly, for example, in the four minstrels' songs in Allla taken together. In this eclogue it serves to bring rude swains and learned priest together while keeping their understandings distinct. So end the Rowleyan pastorals. Between them and the rich exoticism of the African Eclogues fall, as still another man­ ifestation of Chatterton's satiric year, the mock pastorals of April-August 1769. These, if we except the brilliance of the doubtful letter from Fullford, are a comparatively late devel­ opment, though the poet's penchant for mock modes is seen as early as that letter and the accompanying mock aria "I've let my Yard," in the mock-heroic "Romance of the Knight," and in the mock heraldry of the Craish extracts and the De Bergham pedigree. We have also encountered the tendency in his satiric uses of amatory, epistolary, Ossianic, and operatic conventions. Literary parody is a function of the heightened genre consciousness of English literature from 1660 to 1800; certainly it was a constant resource for most of the authors of "huts cif ethem

bCottages

"any 'naked

gNature

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the period who strongly influenced Chatterton—D.ryden, Swift, Gay, Pope, and Churchill. Sometimes the genres themselves are parodied, as in "The Romance of the Knight"; more often the fact of certain reader expectations stemming from a vague consensus about hierarchy of kinds and the re­ sulting implications for subject, style, and form allow the au­ thor to use parody as a reliable satiric device. Here Chatterton is very much a child of his age. The poet-swain equation is central to the pastoral mode and all of Chatterton's mock pastorals except for his inconsider­ able first attempt concentrate on what might be called the politics of poetry. The second satirizes a Bristol poet, and later this piece is completely rewritten to satirize Samuel Johnson. The fourth, though only a fragment, is Chatterton's best mock pastoral. Though strongly political, it is even more strongly poetical in its subject. As the four develop from the incompetent to the poetically interesting, the underlying traits of pastoral—insight into fundamental truths and per­ spectives on the heroic—take on special satiric functions. The first mock pastoral, "Elegy I" of 4 April 1769, is a dis­ astrous burlesque elegy. The poet enlists with apparent seri­ ousness a tediously substantial representation of the chain of being in the funeral cortege so that we may be stunned by the wit of the final two lines: "Ye livid comets, fire the peopled skies, I For lady Betty's tabby cat is dead." The wonder here is that the piece was not only snapped up by Town and Coun­ try but was immediately pirated for the delectation of north­ ern wits by The Weekly Magazine, or Edinburgh Amusement. It would, nevertheless, be pleasant to think that Chatterton knew of the Scots' piracy. Four months later Chatterton has got life into the form by transferring the joke from country to city, so all does not de­ pend on anticlimax. In "Elegy on the Demise of a Great Ge­ nius" (12 August 1769) instead of nature mourning, it is the clamorous noises of busy Bristol that, by amplification or by respectful silence, are asked to participate the author's grief over the death of a Bristol poet. The idea of Bristol, deaf to

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the muses, presuming to have her laureate seems to be inher­ ently comic to Chatterton. The mourners are summoned with varying aptness and wit. The poet himself shall mourn, not by imitating the great elegist, "the plaintive Gray," but by echoing city muses—"Midnight Cats" and Emmanuel Collins, the Bristol versifier so frequently satirized and plun­ dered by Chatterton. Channels and gutters are to swell the elegiac song, but street criers and political matrons are en­ joined to silence. Another city bard, unnamed, whose servile lunacies grace the monthly magazines, is beyond imitation and so must be solicited for a characteristic lament. The low comedy is fairly well maintained until the seventh stanza, in which Chatterton mistakenly turns to the country imagery of serious pastoral elegy. The next stanza recovers comic de­ corum briefly as we learn that it is the loss of creativity we mourn and that it has suffered a city death: "For lo! the Muse of Laurence is no more I Drownd in a Butt of Wine his Ge­ nius lies." However, the bombast of the last six lines again loses touch with the shaping idea of ridiculing a Bristol poetaster by finding city equivalents for the lamenting Nature of the pastoral elegy. Chatterton thoroughly reworks this elegy in February 1770, turning it to literary-political satire in "February: An Elegy" (12 February) by mourning the alleged death by drowning of Samuel Johnson's genius, a death signalized for Chatterton by the publication of Johnson's anti-Patriot pam­ phlet The False Alarm. Chatterton has apparently decided that the idea of the Laurence elegy was too good to waste on Bris­ tol and has learned or recalled in the intervening six months that Swift and Gay got strong comic effects by translating another rural mode, georgic, into urban equivalents. He adds to the city imagery the whirling mop, the shooting corns, brisk Susan, and the Templar spruce from Swift's two "De­ scriptions," as well as the bootblack and tripod and perhaps also the shooting corns and twirling mop from Gay's nicely ambivalent Trivia. In "February" he also borrows from Johnson's own Drury-Lane prologue and from the satirical

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streak in Rowley's fine ode "On Richard I." "Barons here on Bankers [cushions] browded [embroidered] I Fyghte yn Furries [furs] 'genste the Cale [cold]" has been transferred to eighteenth-century London: Now wrapt in ninefold fur, his squeamish grace Defies the fury of the howling storm, And whilst the tempest whistles round his face Exults to find his mantled carcase warm. The basic principle of mock-pastoral elegy with city equiv­ alents is preserved and the joke is extended by several devices. Ten stanzas on the signs of winter in London are introduced, thus picking up the mock-georgic joke to generally good ef­ fect, though within these stanzas an attempt at imitating Churchill's Rosciad sits ill, since the seriously intended satire on the stage jars with the burlesque-comic tone of "Febru­ ary." Nonpartisan politics are effectively introduced with comic distancing: a Patriot bootblack is as good comedy as a Scot in office (11. 25-32). In the final section of the elegy the gloom of February comically merges with the gloom of the elegist and the city details of the Laurence elegy are effectively reworked and introduced. The slight revisions show a skillful hand. Chatterton has not been able to bring himself to drop the inapt lament of the seasons. However, the street criers and political matrons have been effectively combined in Patriot criers. He gets a further joke out of the "Butt of Wine" and eliminates the irrelevant bombast of "The dress of nature with her Glory dies" by changing the firsts in dress to ag. The irrelevant rant of the original final stanza is largely eliminated. It is not a major comic achievement, but it has its moments. More interesting than the poetry itself, however, is the un­ mistakable sense of Chatterton impatiently readying himself to take on literary and political London. The piece was pub­ lished in Town and Country with a Bristol dateline; fair warn­ ing is being served on the metropolis. "Hobbinol and Thyrsis," Chatterton's strongest mock pastoral, exists only in fragment (the final eighty-two lines)

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and we can only guess at how much we have lost. I shall try to argue that the whole was a mock eclogue in which two knowing poets ridicule the motivation of inferior poets, their styles, and the political subjects toward which their selfinterest gravitates. The poem was probably written around August 1769 (see Works, II, 994) and so is probably the first piece in which politics, though not the central issue, becomes an important side issue. Its nature was almost completely obscure until Meyerstein noted that it had been bound into the British Museum manuscript verso first.9 Once this is un­ derstood, we can see a three-level organization of the poem, each involving its small cast of characters: (1) the whole was clearly a dialogue between Hobbinol and Thyrsis, two swain-poets; (2) in the section we have, Thyrsis is parodying two venal poets, Publius and Bumbastus, after which parodies we return to his dialogue with Hobbinol; (3) the parodied Publius, whose sphere is politics, deals with Fox, Bute, and lesser political and literary figures; the parodied Bumbastus deals only with Fox. Once this three-level organi­ zation is seen, the difficulties Meyerstein and Ingram encoun­ tered10 in trying to find a political situation that would ac­ count for the whole fragment disappear. As the fragment opens Thyrsis is concluding his parody of Publius poeticizing, perhaps satirically, on the death of Reynardo (Fox). Publius praises his own style in an aside, then moves to an attack on Batarto's (Bute's) insincere mourning for Reynardo, an attack which includes side shots at Rusticus (?), Servilus (?), Grafton, Johnson, Dodsley, and Day (?). Publius concludes by praising himself in another aside (11. 1-34). After commenting on Publius's poverty, Thyrsis begins his parody of Bumbastus in an imaginary lament for Reynardo. It is not clear whether Fox, who died in 1774 but retired from national politics in 1765, is imagined to be physically dead or is lamented as politically dead (11. 35-61). Hobbinol interrupts with an ironic comment on "want di­ rected verse," which Thyrsis defends. Hobbinol then delivers the conventional eclogue conclusion (11. 62-82).

Imagined Places and Poetries

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In what we have of "Hobbinol and Thyrsis" Spenser is clearly the major poetic influence: the poem has links with most of the eclogues of Shepeardes Calendar (see Works, II, 995). Churchill has also influenced the piece, both in detail and in the preoccupation with the problem of satire vs. selfinterest. The conclusion gives a good sense of the flavor of the fragment and of how nicely the mock-eclogue conventions are blended with the political and poetic subjects; it also al­ lows us to imagine the general feeling of the lost first part, whose length we have no way of determining except to say that if there was at least one more leaf, the poem was proba­ bly over 160 lines long. The manuscript is clearly a first draft. In what we have there are gaps, and the repeated rhyme-word of the last couplet suggests this too. Yet the piece has vigor and ingenuity and we are left with three questions. Who are Hobbinol, Thyrsis, Publius, and Bumbastus? What was the probable nature of the lost first part? What is the function here of mocking the pastoral mode? It is by answering these ques­ tions that I shall try to prove the posited shaping principle. My guess is that Hobbinol and Thyrsis represent Chatterton and one of his versifying friends—say Smith, Cary, or Phillips, that Thyrsis dominated the whole, that he may have been parodying poets lamenting Fox throughout, and that he, consequently, is probably Chatterton. Publius could be Churchill; his style, point of view, and even his name suggest Churchill. If so, the poem precedes Chatterton's nonparodic imitations of Churchill discussed in the last chapter. It is also quite possible that both Publius.and Bumbastus are intended for Bristol poets of the sort satirized in the "Elegy on the Demise of a Great Genius." The major stylistic tic in the Bumbastus parody is the classical interlarding, and Chatter­ ton (with Churchill) frequently attacks this as affectation. My best guess on the nature of the whole poem, then, is that it was an attack by parody on what a series of poets would write on Fox's death, whether physical or political. The central subject would seem to be clear enough, however, if the conclusion can be assumed to be an effective one for the

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entire poem: contemptible poets, proud of their abilities, are actually flatterers guided by self-interest. If this much can be granted, we can begin to see why the mock-eclogue format is used. The poet-swain identification is, as previously noted, a going convention from Theocritus to Chatterton's day, and here it is serving the traditional pastoral function, albeit satirically, of getting down to basic truths about poetry. In Publius and Bumbastus on Reynardo we have also a mock version of the traditional sympathy be­ tween pastoral (here the poetic) and heroic (here the political). Chatterton's problem would seem to have been to find a form in which he could parody several styles he thought worth at­ tacking, attack certain politicians, and attack poets who flatter bad politicians for gain. Because of the many speakers, the various functions, and the ultimate purposes of pastoral, he would seem to have found the ideal solution in the shaping principle posited—the mock eclogue in which two good poets ridicule the motivations, styles, and subjects of bad poets. This principle allows the poetic fusion of a rather mis­ cellaneous collection of subjects, a fusion successful enough, judging by this fragment, to make one wish that Chatterton had posed to himself more such poetic problems. The mock­ ing of traditional forms as a device for satirizing facets of the literary scene is found at its best in Swift, Pope, and Gay, all of whom wrote specific parody within generic parody, which is what Chatterton has done here. The formal and perspectival developments we have fol­ lowed thus far culminate in what many have felt to be Chat­ terton's finest post-Rowleyan poems, the African Eclogues. I have treated elsewhere at some length both their probable motivation and their oddly assorted sources: Wylie Sypher was the pioneer here. 11 To summarize briefly, the exotic Af­ rican place names almost certainly come from maps and geographies and tend to center around the slaving ports on the Gulf of Guinea. The geological imagery of mountains, caves, torrents, and underground rivers and the African mythology

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show Chatterton's imagination working from the arguments and details of Alexander Catcott's Treatise on the Deluge. That treatise was an ambitious and quite extraordinarily learned at­ tempt to synthesize eighteenth-century geology, a survey of world mythology, and contemporary Hebrew scholarship with the biblical accounts of the creation and the flood. The result is a grand single thesis attempting to establish the scien­ tific validity of scripture. Furthermore, Chatterton's edgy re­ lationship with Alexander Catcott, who was certainly the most intellectually gifted man the poet ever knew, was a large part of the motivation for these poems. Catcott took an early interest in the poet, telling his brother George that Chatterton "was upon the whole the most extraordinary genius he ever met with." He soon perceived, however, that Chatterton was ingeniously manufacturing his ancient poetry and documents from scraps of reading and from conversation, "and thinking him a lad of bad morals, declared he would have nothing more to say to him" (see Life, pp. 306-311). Chatterton, as we have seen, alternately courted Catcott's esteem and satirized him—often brassily and even meanly. The whole relationship is yet another part of Chatterton's search for a father and, as has been suggested, it is possible to watch the poet gradually working himself into the role of the clever, rebellious son. Many of Chatterton's works seem to be strongly motivated by this relationship; the African Eclogues fall among the over­ tures to Catcott rather than among the attacks. Catcott's geo­ logical arguments have been incorporated wholesale into Chatterton's violent imagery, and in his mythology Chatter­ ton presents Catcott with the African evidence his theory lacked, giving African versions not only of the creation and the flood, but also of the fall of Lucifer, the fall of man, and the annunciation to the shepherds. Our present concern, however, is with these eclogues and "An African Song" as poetic constructs in the context of Chatterton's developing use of the pastoral mode. We shall see the imaginary African material working fundamental changes in his use of the mode, though most of the changes

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can still be comprehended within the broad concepts of pastoral as access to ultimate truth and, consequently, as a means for getting at the essence of the heroic. The first major shift is evident in "Heccar and Gaira," the first African Eclogue. We are no longer dealing with rustics, more highly placed ingenues, or mediators between pastoral and heroic worlds, but with African heroes. We are reminded of Empson's insistence on the essential sympathy between pastoral and heroic and also of the frequent critical assump­ tion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that, in the Golden Age, society, though ordered, was not yet frag­ mented, that the greatest of men, like David, themselves tended flocks, and that pastoral poetry was once, therefore, a poetry of shepherd-kings. The perspective, then, is radically altered: we are to gain new understanding of the heroic, not by studying pastoral echoes of its human core, not by hearing pastoral criticism of its ideals and pretensions, but by return­ ing the heroic, in the African setting, to its primitive and uncorrupted forms. The startling changes in color, imagery, thought, and action underline the essential similarities among genuine heroes of all times and places: Heccar, Gaira, Cawna, Narva, Mored, Nicou, Rorest, Nica, and their ancestors and companions are brought into the company of i£lla, Birtha, Celmonde, Hurra, Werburgh, Baldwin, and Richard I. In "Heccar and Gaira" (January 1770) the influence of Col­ lins' Oriental Eclogues extends not only to the general concep­ tion of exotic pastoral but also quite specifically to the format of the poem and to the prosody, though Chatterton's couplets are much less balanced, much more flowing, varied, and flex­ ible than Collins'. Chatterton goes for the third time to the format of Collins' fourth eclogue, but instead of two fleeing, exhausted Persian shepherds, we have a dialogue between two African warriors who are exhausted by their pursuit of European slavers. The story of the enslavement of Gaira's be­ loved Cawna and of Gaira's vengeance emerges clearly in two flashbacks—first to Gaira's revenge (11. 33-46), then further back to its cause, the abduction of Cawna and of Gaira's chil-

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dren (11. 59-86). The eclogue moves from exhaustion ("Stretch'd on the Sand two panting Warriors lay"), through growing fury at the recollection of the abduction, to renewed determination on revenge by both warriors. The diction throughout shows Chatterton's remarkable empathic imagi­ nation. Not only is the setting given in the color, movement, and energy of an imagined Africa, but these warrior-kings think, not in terms of black vs. white, but in terms of color vs. its absence. They and their land are a kaleidoscope of color, whereas the European slavers are, again and again, not white, but colorless. Gaira vows to transform these colorless horrors: "I'll strew the Beaches with the mighty dead I And tinge the Lilly of their Features red." The shaping principle of the poem is to embody an attack on slavery in a dialogue be­ tween these chiefs, a dialogue that recalls the total action of abduction and partial revenge; the poem occurs during a pause in the action. Collins's structural method and much of his textural carrying out of his intentions have been effectively metamorphosed into the new setting. Four months elapse before the appearance of "Narva and Mored" (May 1770), and here Chatterton is clearly moving away from Collins' conception of the eclogue. The poem begins "Recite the loves of Narva and Mored, I The priest of Chalma's triple idol said." This recalls Collins' "Eclogue the Third," in which Emyra recites the love of Abbas and Abra. Narva is a priest in the court, Mored a country maiden bring­ ing a fawn to that court; Abbas is a monarch, Abra a shep­ herdess. Yet here the parallel ceases. Narva's priesthood for­ bids the love he shares with Mored, and so they leap together to their deaths. However, this narrative, promised in the first line, is not recited by the priestess until the last forty lines of the poem. What intervenes are sixty-four lines devoted to a furious mystic dance in which warriors ritualistically pursue the fleeing priestess. The movements and color of the dance are heightened by vivid topographical and mythological simile and digression in which the colorless whites once more make an ominous appearance. When the dancers are finally

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exhausted, the priestess sings the tragic legend. In the topog­ raphy and mythology of the epic similes and digressions we see both Catcott's geology and mythology and Chatterton's Africa imagined in a fullness and richness equal to that earlier devoted to the rites, scenes, and physical texture of medieval Bristol. What is structurally remarkable here is the subordination of the narrative, which had been of the essence in "Heccar and Gaira," to what had been in that poem merely setting, but now—as setting, mythology and ritual—has become the focus of our attention for over three-fifths of the poem. One can see connections between the ritually unsuccessful pursuit of the priestess and the forbidden love between priest and pastoral maiden. Likewise the elaborate simile comparing the final fury of the dance to a whirlpool can be felt to echo the lovers' plunge to a watery death. Yet since the ritual domi­ nates, we are forced to read it as the central element, connect­ ing land, community, and gods in a grand swirl of color. The color, energy, and violent action and emotion of imagined Africa are suggested in the heavily figurative description of a dance ritual followed by an echoing narrative of hopeless love and suicide. Though the whole is ostensibly set in a mono­ logue format, the elaborate setting comes closer to over­ whelming than to preparing for the narrative or the mono­ logue. What has happened here to eclogue format is, in fact, rather closely analogous to what happened to the ballad for­ mat in the final procession in "Bristowe Tragedie," and the difference between the measured, stately brilliance and color of that procession and the furious dance in "Narva and Mored" may be taken as the difference between Chatterton's imaginations of chronologically exotic medieval Bristol and geographically exotic Africa. As for the story, the fated love of Narva and Mored, like that of Gaira and Cawna, seems to echo the love of y£lla and Birtha. "The Death of Nicou, an African Eclogue" (June 1770) may well have moved beyond what can be legitimately called an eclogue. It has left Oriental Eclogues in all but title and cou-

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plet prosody. There is no speaker: the poem is built around a third-person narrative that is little more than an almost hid­ den trellis along which the luxuriant similes and digressions wind and thrive. If we search for analogies in Collins, we shall find them in the vague argumentative and narrative pat­ terns that are little more than structural excuses for the de­ scriptive and allegorical exuberance of such poems as his odes "On the Poetical Character," "To Evening," and "The Pas­ sions." A sequential outline of "The Death of Nicou" demon­ strates clearly both where the emphasis lies and the intimate connections of the emphasized elements with Alexander Catcott's Treatise.12 Only one-third of the lines go to the action proper, and until they come together in the last thirty-four lines of the poem, they occur in five scattered passages of from one-half to four lines each. To further deemphasize the action, exactly half of the lines given to it are devoted to the flashback to the cause of war, which itself receives a highly mythological treatment. When we note that all but one of the digressions are related to Catcott's theory of the deluge, it be­ comes clear that any statement of shaping principle and effect will have to account for three elements: narrative thread and climax, digressions, and implied illustration of and extrapola­ tion from Catcott's theory. It is also clear that the subordina­ tion of narrative to preparation for narrative has gone well beyond that noted in "Narva and Mored." What I think we have here is a poem designed to arouse the sublime responses of awe and terror by a mixed sequence of grand geologic ef­ fects, exotic mythology, and ritual echoing (in African mode) of the scriptural history of Lucifer, the earth, and the Mes­ siah,13 all of this climaxing in a narrative of friendship, be­ trayal, revenge, and suicide as violent and primitive as the geology and mythology. This sounds more like a catalogue of contents than a structural principle. In effect, the digressions rend the action asunder and yet build emotionally toward its reappearance in the last thirty-four lines. We have not com­ pletely lost touch with the pastoral mode, for Nicou and

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Chatterton's Art

Rorest are primitive tribal heroes, but it must be recognized that this attempt at the sublime, though called an eclogue, is trying more for the primeval roots of the heroic than for its common denominator with the rest of humanity. Friendship, betrayal, revenge, and suicide are human enough, but they are lifted here to superhuman perspectives where even an ^Ella might not feel entirely at home. In earlier sections of this chapter on the Ossianic and ideal-descriptive modes we have dealt with poems in which profound emotional effects are sought, as here, through an almost musical interplay of diverse evocative materials rather than through the orderly movement of argument or consecutive narration. The language and prosody of "The Death of Nicou" are of a piece with the sublime material there juxtaposed. The dic­ tion ranges from grand to grandiose. Most of the syntax is a sweeping together of the diverse sublime rather than a pro­ gression of logical or chronological statement. The first sen­ tence, for example, runs grammatically through the first thirty-eight lines. Chatterton or an editor has placed periods at lines 8, 14, 24, 26, 30, 32, and 36 and has placed only a semicolon at the end of the sentence, but these internal peri­ ods are either pause indicators or the conclusions of independ­ ent clauses falling within the "grammatical" framework of the long sentence. The syntax, too, is reminiscent of that in Collins' odes: "To Evening" opens with a twenty-line sen­ tence. In "The Death of Nicou" we do not get an ordered progression of clear narrative statements until the last sixteen lines, and even this shift in syntax has the effect of a musical decrescendo rather than of a return from rhapsody to order. Though the prosodic unit throughout is still the couplet, these are as far from the logical polarities and balances and the orderly affective qualities of Collins's ecologue couplets as could well be imagined; only, again, in the last sixteen lines is his balanced prosody approached. Chatterton's last poem in the pastoral mode is "An African Song," published in Court and City less than a month before his death. In format it combines dialogue with a stanzaic

Imagined Places and Poetries

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oratorio format anticipated as early as Churchwarden Joe's 1764 deathbed aria and developed through the burlettas of au­ tumn 1769 and May-June 1770. The subject is once more "the loves of Narva and Mored," but they are not recited here by another but sung by the principals, not forbidden but joyfully consummated. Africa here is a gentler, softer Africa—almost Anglicized but for the macaws, Mored's black skin, and the place names. It is structured as an action conveyed in four arias: Mored sings her longing for Narva, changes stanza as she sees him approaching, changes again as she greets him with unfeigned desire, and he responds in the same measure as he celebrates their expectation of immediate sexual delight. "An African Song" is a straightforward pastoral celebration of physical love, and Chatterton has here returned to the sim­ ple, celebratory tonality of the first and third minstrels' songs in JEMa. There is no hint of the hopeless loss of love in "Heccar and Gaira," of the demon-inspired lust of Rorest in "The Death of Nicou," or of the taboos that Narva and Mored themselves faced in the second eclogue. To Mored, Narva is simply "my archer," an African swain, and she is simply a loving and desiring nymph, a happy version of the damsel in the roundelay. There is no ominous portent in her longing, only the anticipation of delight. In searching for the shaping principles of seventeen works in the pastoral mode it has been necessary to work closely with the detail of their structures. Yet larger tendencies have also made themselves felt, tendencies partially paralleled in the development of Chatterton's heroic works, tendencies we have seen in other modes. We have watched Chatterton move to the very limits of the traditional pastoral and, in "Narva and Mored" and "The Death of Nicou," break beyond those limits. The songs in JElla referred the hero's splendid love to the common level of country love, enabling us to see it, thereby, as human and sympathetic. "The Warre," "Elinoure and Juga," and two of the three Rowleyan eclogues brought the heroism of war to the test of more fundamental truths,

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Chatterton's Art

forcing us to see its impact on those for whom warfare spelled calamity rather than honor. In doing this, these pastorals re­ ferred war not so much to those simple truths which are the broad base of the social pyramid, but to the multiple perspec­ tives of a philosopher, shepherds, heroes' wives, ruined farmers, and a warrior's son. Only for the innocence of Nigel does the heroism of war maintain its validity and splendor. The test of ultimate truth has shifted to the test of relative truths—the meaning of heroism is defined by each man's par­ ticular perspective. In the African eclogues, with the help of Collins, this potential relativism in pastoral returns once more to heroic love, the subject of all the minstrels' songs in Ailla, but sees it now from the exotic and revealing African perspec­ tive. In many ways the subjects are still shared human con­ stants made the more striking by the exotic setting. Like ^Ella and Birtha, Gaira and Cawna are separated by outside threats, and Gaira triumphs, like JEIL·, over these threats. Celmonde's lust-driven treachery is paralleled in Rorest's breach of friend­ ship, and Nicou's suicide in yElla's. Yet the exoticism gradu­ ally moves from a background for doomed love in "Heccar and Gaira" to a foreground position in "Narva and Mored" and "The Death of Nicou." It is the exotic and primeval in setting, ritual, geology, and mythology that take up more and more of Chatterton's attention. The extent to which he was a child of his century, of preced­ ing poetic generations has not been sufficiently understood. However, the persistent tendency of his forms and subjects toward the less ordered, the affective, the exotic, the dimly and powerfully primeval shows us that the Romantics were right to see in him a precursor. Most strikingly, his move­ ment from a conventional conception of pastoral to a subvert­ ing of its intent by turning pastoral perspective—conven­ tionally a means to shared truth—into subject itself in "Narva and Mored" and "Death of Nicou" shows him breaking the bounds of pastoral convention and moving toward the amal­ gamation and confusion of modes or genres that culminates in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century conceptions of the

Imagined Places and Poetries

311

poem as opposed to the neoclassical conception of an hierar­ chy of kinds. Yet the older view held its strength, for in "An African Song," his last pastoral, we see him returning to swain and nymph in a clear, simple, affirmative action, con­ veyed in conventional song measures and in a quieter, more traditional diction, prosody, and syntax. IMAGINED WORLDS We have explored three imaginative worlds radically distinct from Chatterton's eighteenth-century Bristol and London— the Rowleyan, the Ossianic, and the African. All are strongly sensuous, but the range and connotation of their sensuosities are quite distinct. The first Rowley poem, "Bristowe Tragedie," introduced us in its procession and execution scenes to the clear, ordered daylight brilliance in which Chatterton fairly consistently imagined medieval Bristol. This Rowleyan sensuosity perhaps reaches its artistic height in the second Rowleyan eclogue, with Nygelle's imagination of the crusades. The African world is more violently colored: the sun is higher and more glaring, the shades and the night more sensual, the movements are violent and furious. Procession turns to dance in "Narva and Mored," explicable combat to mythically shaped obsession in "The Death of Nicou." In both poems we break into a more mysterious, primeval world than the one we inhabited in the Rowley poems. In the Ossianic world Chatterton has imagined a somber northern equivalent of this Africa, a pre-Norman world that shares the furious movement and the primitivism of his Africa and the historical thickness of his medieval Bristol and yet has stormy movements and gloomier colors all its own. Language, char­ acters, actions, and structures reinforce these distinctions. In each world we can trace the literary roots from Chatterton's eighteenth-century present, but so vivid was his imagination that the worlds themselves invade our minds with their thor­ oughness and consistency and we forget their origins. If we review the four modes that begin in the Rowley year

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Chatterton's Art

but persist beyond it, demonstrating the continuing vitality of Chatterton's poetic gift, a puzzling pattern emerges. He is competent but undistinguished—with scattered exceptions— in the Gray-Collins descriptive mode he so clearly admired. The modes that prove congenial, on the other hand, are as widely disparate as could well be imagined: the pastoral, beautifully handled in contemporary and Romantic muta­ tions; the Ossianic, which he could both see as rant and use to advance some of his most central concerns; and the familiar epistle (treated in chapter four), in which he pushes on with verve and imagination in Pope's own footsteps. It becomes quite clear, with this mixed response to available modes, that Chatterton is not easily pigeonholed either as a single-threat artist or into any of the conventional categories reserved for eighteenth-century poets. What does pervade his total work and mark him as unique among English poets is his power to build in intensely realized detail grand, imagined worlds and poetries—whether in medieval Bristol, at the supposedly megalomaniacal summits of eighteenth-century national power, or in the mythic beginnings of pre-Norman Britain or primeval Africa.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION, pp. 3-14 1. Jean Laymarie, Picasso: The Artist of the Century, trans. James Emmons (London, 1972), p. viii. 2. E .g. , by Richard Holmes in his bicentenary reassessment "Thomas Chatterton: The Case Re-opened," Cornhill Maga­ zine 178 (1970): 244. 3. G. E. Bentley,Jr., Blake Records (Oxford, 1969), p. 546. 4. The Letters of fohn Keats, ed. M. B. Forman, 3rd ed. (London, 1947), p. 425. 5. Henry Crabb Robinson, Diary, Reminiscences, and Corre­ spondence (London, 1869), III, 195. 6. T. Hall Caine, Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Bos­ ton, 1869), pp. 184-191. 7. E.H.W. Meyerstein, Life of Thomas Chatterton (New York and London, 1930); The Complete Works of Thomas Chat­ terton: A Bicentenary Edition (Oxford, 1971). 8. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York, 1956), p. 304. 9. See Bertrand H. Bronson, "Thomas Chatterton," The Age of fohnson (New Haven, 1949), reprinted in Bronson, Facets of the Enlightenment (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968); Phyllis Greenacre, "The Family Romance of the Artist," Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 12 (1958): 31, and "The Imposter," Psychoanalytic Quarterly 21 (1958): 363, 367, 369-371; Donald S. Taylor, "Chatterton: Insults and Gifts to the Rev. Mr. Catcott," Literature and Psychology 22 (1972): 35-43. 10. The history will illustrate the validity for Chatterton of Ralph Cohen's "On the Interrelations of Eighteenth-Century Literary Forms," New Approaches to Eighteenth-Century Litera­ ture, ed. Phillip Harth (New York and London, 1974), pp. 33-78. What happened within Chatterton's persistent modes (last chapter) will also illustrate the gradual shift from didactic to lyric that Cohen there suggests (pp. 55, 62, 78), though I would be inclined to call the latter an expressive or visionary shift.

314

Notes to pages 15-18

11. The Principles of Art was first published at Oxford in 1938; The Idea of History was written between 1936 and 1940 and was first published at Oxford in 1946. I cite the Galaxy paperback editions (New York, 1958 and 1956). Crane's monograph, written in 1950, was first published in The Idea of the Humanities and Other Essays Critical and Historical (Chicago and London, 1967), II, 45-156, but I cite the separate paper­ back publication (Chicago, 1971). I have attempted elsewhere to lay out important areas of agreement, disagreement, and mutual reinforcement between Collingwood and Crane: "R. G. Collingwood: Art, Craft, and History," Clio 2 (1972-1973): 239-279; "Literary Criticism and Historical In­ ference," Clio 5 (1975-1976): 345-370; and an as yet unpub­ lished essay on the mediacy-immediacy distinction. 12. In "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory," trans. Elizabeth Benzinger, New Literary History 2 (1970-1971): 7-37, reprinted in New Directions in Literary His­ tory, ed. Ralph Cohen (Baltimore, 1974), Jauss explicitly builds from Collingwood's broad premises (p. 9) and chimes well with him on the moral necessity of art. Jauss's unexam­ ined presupposition that the final aim of literature is "emanci­ pation of man from his natural, religious and social ties" (p. 37) sees the constricting forces as primarily social, whereas Collingwood locates "corruptions of consciousness" in both individual and communal thought. 13. Jauss explicitly acknowledges Collingwood on this point: "Literary History," pp. 9-10, 18-19, 20-23, and 34ff., where Gadamer's differing extension of Collingwood's con­ cept is criticized. 14. See also Crane's "Philosophy, Literature, and the His­ tory of Ideas" and "On Writing the History of Criticism," The Idea of the Humanities, I, 173ff.; II, 157£F. 15. Jauss's seven theses (see "Literary History") for a re­ writing of literary history on the basis of an aesthetic of recep­ tion and impact are, taken together, a methodology for and a suggestion of the possibilities of imaginative reenactment in literary history.

Notes to pages 18-21

315

16. Here Jauss, whose artist is as manipulative as Crane's, demands, like Collingwood, an equal strenuousness from the audience—the one in manipulating, the other in accommodat­ ing new horizons of aesthetic and, hence, moral awareness. If the new work largely succeeds in altering such horizons it may suffer the fate of becoming a classic. This presents the literary historian with a special problem: the classics' "selfevident beauty and their seemingly unquestionable 'eternal significance' bring them . . . into dangerous proximity with the irresistibly convincing and enjoyable 'culinary' art, and special effort is needed to read them 'against the grain' of ac­ customed experience so that their artistic nature becomes evi­ dent again." "Literary History," p. 15. 17. Objective Knowledge: An Evaluative Approach (Oxford, 1972), p. 188. 18. See especially IH 282-305. 19. Schematized in "Literary Criticism and Historical In­ ference" (see note 11 above), pp. 356-357. 20. Collingwood's immediate concern is with history and art in general. Jauss ("Literary History," p. 8) brings the con­ cepts to the specific case of literary history and argues that the interaction of authors' and readers' horizons of expectation and of other intervening horizons can restore the fruitful interplay of criticism and history. 21. I argue the inconsistencies of the position in "R. G. Collingwood: Art, Craft, and History" (see note 11 above). 22. See especially Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence (New York, 1973) and A Map of Misreading (New York, 1975). In much of my argument in this section I am at cross-purposes with Bloom's provocative handling of the subject, though I have sometimes used his terminology. The case of Chatterton confirms several of Bloom's points but eventually, I think, undercuts his larger conclusions. I should like someday to at­ tempt to argue with this larger position, to suggest that in cer­ tain ways it is more a poem—a dark twentieth-century Dunciad IV—than a useful organon for students of literature. I feel strengthened in my own position on Chatterton in these mat-

316

Notes to pages 23-28

ters by William K. Wimsatt's elegant and provocative "Imita­ tion as Freedom—1717-1798," New Literary History 1 (19701971): 215-236. 23. See previous note. 24. Jauss's "culinary art": he notes that great works can turn "culinary," thus requiring a special effort from critics (and teachers?) so that they can be read with a sense of their original challenge to the presuppositions of their day (see note 15 above). To be candid (though not charitable), much of Chatterton's work demands this effort. 25. Michael Riffaterre has reinforced this position by not­ ing that identification of sources and influences is of little value, that it lies limp, as uninterpreted data, until brought into relation with the structure of the influenced work: "... the fact that the same descriptive system appears in two texts does not prove influence, nor does it prove that any such influence, if real, is of significance, because the system is only prefabricated language, so to speak. What counts is the use to which it is put. . . . At most, such comparisons can account for certain elements of the poem separately, perhaps even within their respective contexts, but they cannot account for their function as components of the overall structure. Only such structures can give a poem its particular meaning. Hence it is only to such a structure that literary history may hook its chains of causality. . . . Literary influence or classification can be established only by the discovery of structural parallelism. Which means that textual components should not be com­ pared, but rather their functions." "The Stylistic Approach to Literary History," New Literary History 2 (1970-1971): 39-55, reprinted in New Directions in Literary History, quotations from pp. 41-43 and 46 of the first printing. Except for the style, this might have been written by Crane. 26. Jauss, of course, is with Collingwood on this point— and on the next. 27. Modes, as I define them, seem to me fairly close to Jauss's "horizons of expectation" (see especially his "Literary History," pp. 18-19) and Collingwood might conceivably

Notes to pages 29-32

317

call them immediacies of literary thought, so perhaps my principle of narrative continuity leans as much toward Collingwood and Jauss as toward Crane. I. SEVEN EARLY PIECES: I763-I764

1. Authenticity and dating evidence are given in headnotes, Works, II. In this book I have occasionally revised earlier con­ clusions on these matters. Meyerstein suggested without supporting argument (Life, p. 127) that Chatterton might have written "Custom": it is not difficult to extrapolate forward and backward from ca­ nonical works to this satire's subject and techniques. It is both thoughtful and artistically unsure. Its persuasive structure has three sections: moral argument, satiric exempla, and exhorta­ tion-recapitulation. If the poem is Chatterton's, the differ­ ences from later thinking on this favorite topic (see "On Happienesse," "Happiness," "The Defence") are interesting. The counters—inclination, custom, conscience—are the same throughout, but Chatterton's later freethinking reverses their respective values. The heavy use of scripture is also charac­ teristic: in "Custom" Peter and Paul turn discursive satirists. Works, II, 1140-1141, gives my reasons for finding "Custom" a plausible midpoint between the apparent orthodoxy of the early hymns and the later freethinking. 2. Dating would, of course, acknowledge composition of Rowleyan works. In Works I tried to combine a complex body of internal and external evidence (see Works, I, xxxvi-xl and tabular headnotes on dating for each work). 3. The Languages of Criticism and the Structure of Poetry (To­ ronto, 1953), pp. 160-161. 4. See Norman Maclean, "From Action to Image: Theories of the Lyric in the Eighteenth Century," in Ronald Crane et al., Critics and Criticism Ancient and Modern (Chicago, 1952). 5. Another religious poem, "The Resignation," cannot be dated, though subject and apparently orthodox religious stance could place it with these 1763-1764 hymns. The poet praises God by arguing about an unspecified grief that God

318

Notes to page 32

has seen fit to inflict; each stanza is a step in this argument. The poet flies to God in his affliction, knowing that God's ways, though impenetrable, are just. Since the poet is human, his body shows the sickness of his soul, but he will strive to thank God for this blow and to check his sorrow so that his spirit's night may vanish at God's light. Again praise has been elicited by working through a problem, in this case one posed by the juxtaposition of theological certainties about God's na­ ture and the personal reality of affliction. See also note 11. 6. "The Churchwarden" was attributed in 1837 by William Tyson and has been unquestioned since. Tyson, Skeat, Richter, Meyerstein, and I have commented on connections among Gay's "The Miser and Plutus," "The Churchwarden" and "Sly Dick" without making the connections clear (see Works, II, 1139) and these connections argue most powerfully for Chatterton's authorship. Tyson is correct in noting similarities between the openings of "The Churchwarden" and "Sly Dick," and Skeat is correct in saying that lines 1-2 of Gay's fable influenced "The Churchwarden." Consequently Richter is wrong in finding Gay's first line a direct influence on "Sly Dick," though both Meyerstein and I credited this. If one compares the opening couplet of Gay's fable, "The Churchwarden," lines 1-6 and 13-14, and "Sly Dick," lines 1-4, it will be immediately seen that the influence had to run from Gay to "The Churchwarden" to "Sly Dick," and that this particular Gay fable is not, therefore, a necessary influ­ ence on "Sly Dick," whatever the undeniable general influ­ ence of Gay on Chatterton. It further follows that "Sly Dick" had to have been composed after "The Churchwarden," which was published 7 January 1764. This buttresses all the testimony tending to pair "Sly Dick" and "Apostate Will," the latter dated 14 April 1764. The evidence—as briefly as possible. All four phrases in the first couplet of Gay's fable reappear in "The Churchwarden" (11. 1, 13-14), whereas only the first half of Gay's first line ap­ pears in "Sly Dick" very slightly rearranged. The lines used from "The Miser and Plutus" are "The wind was high; the window shakes, I With sudden start the Miser wakes." It has

319

Notes to page 32

not been hitherto noted that another Gay fable, "The Univer­ sal Apparition," makes an equal contribution to "The Churchwarden": lines 9-10 of Gay's fable—"A ghastly phantome, lean and wan, I Before him rose, and thus began"— appear almost word for word as lines 17-18 of "The Church­ warden," but not at all in "Sly Dick." Further, Meyerstein (Life, p. 43n) discovered that "The Churchwarden" also borrows from Emmanuel Collins' "The Vicar of Bray in Somersetshire" (1754), which concerns William Batt, a political turncoat for clerical profit. Lines to­ ward the middle read "I'll shew the maxims of the BATT" and "By changing sides, I save my bacon." Meyerstein notes the influence on "The Churchwarden," lines 23-24. One further sort of influence needs noting. Apparitions ap­ pear in both Gay fables and in "The Churchwarden" and "Sly Dick." In "The Miser," "The Vicar," "The Churchwarden" and "Apostate Will" greed wears a hypocritical cloak. Both apparitions and dissembling self-interest are favorite topics throughout Gay's fables. Finally, "The Vicar" and "Apostate Will" both focus on apostasy for gain. The complex situation of influence (with phrasing, I omit all but the closest parallels) would seem to be this: Gay's "Miser" 1727

Gay's "Apparition" 1727

(2 lines, apparition, hypocritical greed)

(2 lines, apparition)

Collins' "Vicar" 1754 (2 lines, hypo- (apostasy) critical greed)

1

"Churchwarden" 7 Ian. 1764

/

(4 lines, apparition, greed)

^

, .. "SlyDick 1764

\

(hypocritical greed) ^ "Apostate Will" 14 April 1764

In view of these connections and their necessary routes and especially in view of the separate uses of "Vicar" in "Churchwarden" and "Apostate Will," the conclusion that "Churchwarden" is Chatterton's is inescapable.

320

Notes to pages 32-38

7. SeeLife, p. 142 and n. 8. There is also ironic typography in Fullford's letter. He moves from "my Master, the Sexton" to "my Head Master, a great Projector" (the churchwarden) to "my GREAT MASTER"— all making "a profitable Job out of the church." The typo­ graphical crescendo suggests the ecclesiastical hierarchy from Fullford to sexton to churchwarden—to whom? Thomas Broughton, Vicar of Redcliff? Cutts Barton, Dean of Bristol Cathedral? Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol? All are sub­ sequently charged by Chatterton with duplicitous venality. In 1769 ("Journal 6th") Chatterton accuses Barton of selling the High Cross, of which Joe dreams, for a church dinner. Yet I suspect that Broughton is the target in Fullford's letter, though Chatterton does not satirize him specifically in any ex­ tant piece that is certainly canonical until his "Epistle to Catcott" of December 1769. 9. Chatterton returns to the mode only four times—two freethinking satires in September 1769 and January 1770 ("A Priestwhose Sanctimonious Face" and "The Methodist") and two political satires in April 1770 ("Fables for the Court: The Shepherds" and "The Hag"). Since all four show a falling off in imagination and poetic strength in the mode, I shall deal with them in this note to the more successful early fables rather than with the later satirical works in other modes. Two are scarcely begun before being abandoned and, though the religious fables show some verve, the political fables exploit the mode only to strike a rehearsed political stance. "A Priest" is one section of "Journal 6th," Chatterton's first freethinking poem, the total structure of which will be treated in chapter four. It is straight comic-satiric narrative in fable style and, like the 1764 fables, it is structured to display anatomized character.lt consists of one lengthy episode, done largely in dialogue, between two clerics who differ in all but their gluttony. Their physical traits and speech comically echo their contrasting moral flaws. Though Chatterton clearly favors the jolly, sensual rector over the dour, selfrighteous dean, he sees both as sorry representatives of reli-

Notes to page 38

321

gion. The hypocrisy attacked in "The Churchwarden" and "Apostate Will" is here rationalizing a different greed. The dramatization of human contradiction is treated at greater length than in the 1764 fables and the points are less eco­ nomically made. It is, nevertheless, a lively picture of eighteenth-century Bristol clerical life, and the episode does bring out the contrasting flaws in the two characters. "The Methodist" is the beginning only of another "Apos­ tate Will," again a fable structured to embody Chatterton's anatomization of a turner. What we have gives an ingenious psychosomatic description of a convert to Methodism whose body has not yet caught up with his transition from somber Puritan to fiery Methodist dissent. So far so good, but here the fragment ends. The two political fables represent a new departure in the mode. They borrow the political allegorizing qf Gay's second series of fables. Both are preceded by nearly identical and rather dull disclaimers of allegorical intent. The best poetry in these tease-prologues is the punning argument that the poet's fable has no more moral than modern tragedy: "The Tragic Muse once pure and chaste I Is turnd a Whore debauchd by Taste . . . I And yet the Harlot scarce goes down: I She's been so long upon the Town." In "The Shepherds" we have only the beginning of a con­ trast between two shepherds, George II and III. The "aged shepherd" was comparatively honest, though he fleeced his English sheep to warm Hanover, and so his death was solem­ nized by mass mourning, though "none but mercers mournd in deed." We get only the beginning of the second shepherd's rule, but clearly George III was to have been the focus of the satire, and we can assume it would have been a pastoralallegorical statement of the Patriot conspiracy myth—the duped king manipulated by the Princess Dowager and Bute. One knows from the title that "The Hag" will center on the Princess Dowager, who "Was now a harlot, now a queen / As fir'd by lust, or rais'd by spleen. . . . I Was ever nation rul'd before, / By an old stallion and a whore!" The fable is a very

322

Notes to pages 38-51

lightly allegorized statement of the supposed political and sexual intrigues surrounding the Princess Dowager. Neither political fable is narrative, then; both are didactic allegory, the first beginning to build on a contrast between two reigns, the second treating its topics seriatim. Neither fable can be ranked either with Chatterton's better political satire or with his early achievements in fable, though "The Shepherds" promises more than "The Hag" delivers. 10. Life, p. 338, notes the affinity with Keats's thought. 11. "The Resignation," it strikes me, is less likely to be af­ fected piety. The orthodox argument is straightforward and—especially in its failures of consistency in deciding whether to address God or to talk about him—probably sin­ cere. It is less flamboyant than "On the Last Epiphany," less overtly clever than the problem solving of "A Hymn." It would be useful, in tracing the strange turnings of Chatterton's religious thought, to be able to date it. 12. Italics supplied in above examples.

II. THE IMAGINATIVE MATRIX: THE ROWLEY WORLD AND ITS DOCUMENTS, I768-I769

1. Jacob Bryant, Observations upon the Poems of Thomas Rowley (London, 1781), p. 350, as quoted in Life, p. 164. 2. In Works, usually with suggestions about literary, bio­ graphical or psychological significance. 3. The Idea of History, pp. 245-246. 4. "Four Letters on Warwyke," "Abstracts from Letters," "Three Rowley Letters," "Lyfe of W: Canynge." 5. "Mass Book Inscription," "Fragment of a Sermon," "Nine Deeds and Proclamations," "Painter's Bill to Canynge." 6. "Extracts from Craishes Herauldry," "Account of the Family of the De Berghams"; "Rowley's Heraldic Account," "Historie of Peyncters yn Englande"; "Of the Auntiaunt Forme of Monies," "The Ryse of Peyncteynge," "The An­ tiquity of Christmas Games"; "Englandes Glorye Revyved," "Explayneals of the Yellowe Rolle."

Notes to pages 51-89

323

7. "A Discourse on Brystowe," the third of "Three Row­ ley Letters," "The Rolle of Seyncte Bartlemeweis Priorie." 8. "Rowley's Printing Press," "Towre Gate," "Hardinge," "Rowley's Collections for Canynge," "Bristol Cas­ tle," "Seyncte Maries Chyrche of the Porte," "Knightes Templaries Chyrche," "The Chyrche Oratorie of the Calendaryes," "Three Tombs," "Note to Map of Bristol," "Saxon Tinctures," "Elle's Coffin," "Churches of Bristol," "Fragmentes of Anticquitie," "The Court-Mantle," "Saxon Achievements," "Anecdote of Chaucer." 9. Appendix to third of "Three Rowley Letters"; chronical in third of "Three Rowley Letters," "Chronical 1340-1374"; "Byrtonne," "Lyfe of W: Canynge." 10. Notes and Queries, 22 July 1950, pp. 323-324. 11. Camden's Britannia, ed. Edmund Gibson (London, 1695), col. 73. I have used the 1971 facsimile published by David and Charles Reprints. 12. Britannia, col. 196. 13. The Itinerary of John Leland, 2nd ed., ed. Thomas Hearne (Oxford, 1744-1745), VII, 87. 14. On all these sources see Works, II, 884-885. On the im­ pact of Gothic architecture on the Rowley idea see C. Weber, Chatterton chapter of Bristols Bedeutung fur die Englische Romantik und die Deutsch-Englischen Beziehungen (Halle, 1935) and H. Oppel, The Sacred River, Beiheft 4 of Die Neueren Sprachen (1959). 15. Bristol, 1824: see 1460 entry. 16. For documentation of Chatterton's borrowings and for his devices for combining them into "Account," see Works, II, 977-984. 17. Baronettage (London, 1720), 1,18-19. III. THE ROWLEYAN WORKS: EXPLORATIONS IN HEROIC MODES, 1768-1769

1. There is no evidence that Chatterton wrote the other two "centos" his subtitle claims; he writes to Baker, 6 March 1769, "The Tournament I have only one Cento of . . . the remainder is entirely lost."

324

Notes to pages 91-105

2. William C. Strange has called to my attention Simone Weil's essay on the problem faced here, "The Iliad or the Poem of Force," Politics II (1945), 321-331, trans. Mary McCarthy. Weil argues that force and its effects on the human spirit—turning souls into things—are, in the Iliad, perfectly mirrored, with an answering awareness both of the trans­ forming power of force and of the value of that which it de­ stroys. She denies that perfection to subsequent epics—to the Odyssey , the Aeneid , the chansons de geste. Chatterton's Hast­ ings epics are no exception certainly, but it is a mark of his perceptiveness that he has faced the problem and, in "Battle of Hastings II," approached a solution. 3. Camden's Britannia, col. 124-125. 4. Chatterton annotated "Battle of Hastynges I" for Barrett and Catcott much as he had "Bristowe Tragedie" (see Works, II, 822, 826-827, 829-830, 832, 833). Part of these notes is bait: he makes ingenuous mistakes for Barrett's correction. For the rest, the general drift is to invite comparison with the use of similes in the Iliad and with Shakespeare's use of fairies (thus continuing the challenge to "hardships") and to suggest that "Battle of Hastynges I" gives an ancient and authentic ac­ count of matters of current debate among eighteenth-century historians, antiquaries, and poets—Offa's dyke, Caesar's in­ vasion, Stonehenge, and Welsh fairy lore (see Works, II, 822, 827-828, 829-833). 5. See, for example, Camden's Britannia, col. 159. 6. Chatterton's reasons for Bristolizing Hastings are clear enough and he had made Turgot the Camden ofpre-Norman Bristol in "Discourse on Brystowe," written between the two versions of Hastings. It is possible that while writing "Battle of Hastynges I" he thought of Turgot as Dunhelmus Cambriensis rather than as Dunhelmus Bristoliensis (see Works, II, 826). 7. On these changes and Chatterton's probable sources see Works, II, 830-832. 8. There is no evidence that a lengthier "life" existed. Note that "A Brief Account" leaves no time but Rowley's youth and early manhood unaccounted for.

Notes to pages 108-H8

325

9. Three other pieces are prosodically Pindaric—"On Fitz Hardynge," the Chorus to "Goddwyn," and "Elegy Written at Stanton Drew," but their forms and subjects are so differ­ ent that they will be dealt with in sequences of works with which they have closer modal connections. 10. On the probable origin and significance of this name, see Works, II, 826. 11. The matter so richly covered in "Ynn Auntient Dayes" is cut to one line—"Doffde his Honours and fine Clothes." • 12. See note 4, chapter one. 13. The relationship between prosodic and sense units is diagrammed in the chart on p. 326. 14. The two poems accompanying "Songe toe Ella" are designed to set off what Chatterton clearly saw as a substan­ tial achievement. In the verse note "To John Ladgate" Chatterton chooses the major recognized poet of Rowley's age, suggests that Lydgate had challenged Rowley to a flyting, and effectively conveys Rowley's modesty. It speaks a pleasant, relaxed unpretentiousness in Rowley. Lydgate's friendship is more important to him than any poetic victory. The verse note is a predecessor of the much more ambitious Rowleyan-Popean verse epistles we shall come to in chapter four. Of course, all of this modesty and friendliness is strategic—not in Rowley, but in Chatterton. The descent from the warm urbanity of Rowley's note to the stiff, trite, superficially learned prosodic incompetence of "John Ladgate's Answer" is steep enough. One can only conclude that Chatterton wanted to foil "Songe" and, in particular, its pro­ sodic brilliance, but that in "John Ladgate's Answer" he foiled too well. The rhymes of the answer are weak and im­ perfect, tending to fall heavily on very minor or even redun­ dant words. The feet are often imperfect and exceedingly clumsy. Short as the answer is, it is pointlessly reiterative of a very meager stock of commonplaces. The only thing in it ap­ proaching wit is the compliment to Rowley with which it concludes. The informing principles, in short, is the writing of a bad poem by Lydgate that shall show off Rowley . 15. London,1631; p. 266.

Prosodic Units

(space

indicates end of unit; potential caesura) I. Invocation of Ella for poetic boldness and length of fame (4 lines.)

II. Ella's triumph over Danes (14) A. Danes' array (5)

B . Ella's slaughter (3)

C . Numbers slain (3)

D. Deeds of Bristolians (3)

Invocation of Ella as Bristol's guardian (18) A. Wherever your spirit delights to be (13-2) 1. On the battlefield (1) 2. Hearing battle from afar (2) 3. Amidst slaughter (1) 4. Among the war horses (3)

5. In Bristol at the Castle (3)

6. At the minster (1) B . Let Bristol still be your care (5-1) 1. Guard it from foe and fire (1) 2. Let Avon encircle it (1) 3. Nor let it burn (1) 4. Until the world expires in flame (1)

Notes to pages 119-143

327

16. See Works, I, 22-23; II, 819. The last of these, "In the merry merye Vale," may have been planned as a Robin Hood piece: cf. "Merrie Tricks," above. 17. Chatterton's note 19 to "Parlyamente" is a poem "On the Dedication of St. Mary's Church" constructed as another of the poet's processions. The sequence is exactly that of "Bridge Narrative"—procession, ceremony, sermons, mer­ rymaking. Although copied out by Chatterton in fourteeners, the pauses and rhyme scheme give it exactly the ballad meas­ ure of "Bristowe Tragedie" and lines 9 and 13-14 of this poem strongly influence Blake's innocent "Holy Thursday." 18. I incline now to think that the interlude offered to Dodsley 21 December 1768 was "Parlyamente." 19. One might guess that in this preference for poetry over history, in Chatterton's writing his earliest play ("Merrie Tricks") with two, then three characters, and in the lack of plot in his second play ("Parlyamente"), he has been influ­ enced in his three-part illustration of the history of English drama by reading Aristotle. 20. For a discussion of various readings of this difficult stanza, see Works, II, 930-931 and 1223 (tochelod). 21. The specific borrowings I have noted are these (Othello references in parentheses): swoon, sElla 1266-1269 (trance, Othello IV, i, 45); 1270 (V, ii, 280); 1276-1279 (IV, iii, passim); 1285-1286 (V, ii, 228; IV, ii, 20-21; III, iii, 278); 1288 (V, ii, 155ff.); 1289-1294 (III-V passim; V, ii, 264-265; V, ii, 276277); 1302 (V, ii, 280); 1303-1305 (IV, ii, 46-61); 1306-1307 (II, iii, 261-263); 1309-1310 (V, ii, 339; V, ii, 352-356); 1311-1312 (III, iii, 382-383; IV, iii, 344-345); 1313-1314 (V, ii, 287-291); 1323 (III, iii, 381); Birtha and knell, 1326 (Desdemona and alarm bell, II, iii, 160, 250-251); 1331 (V, ii, passim). 22. An "Epitaph on Robert Canynge" (Oct.-Nov. 1768) ostensibly concerns Canynge's great-grandfather, who, ac­ cording to Chatterton's legend, established the family for­ tune; it is an unpretentious piece of wit. In the first line Robert is the morning star; William, of course, is the sun, thus por­ tended, of the family's and Redcliff's fortunes. Morning star

328

Notes to pages 144-182

and sun each get four lines of the Rowleyan stanza, and they are gracefully united in the final couplet. This epitaph is a rare instance in the poet's work of a poem structurally based on a single metaphor. Not the least of its felicities is the faint hint of Christian history in the morning star of the first line and Michael's trump of the last couplet. 23. Rowley digresses to a discussion of Richard of Cir­ encester's Roman studies: Richard's supposed De Situ Britanniae was proved in the nineteenth century to be the 1758 forgery of Charles Bertram. 24. The possibility of death from an overdose of selfadministered venereal remedies is tentatively suggested in Life, pp. 441-442, and espoused in Richard Holmes' Comhill reassessment (see second note to introduction). 25. Poems, Supposed to Have Been Written at Bristol, ed. JeremiahMilles (London, 1782), p. 365. 26. In Works, I, 332, lines 37-50 of "The Romance" have been erroneously placed at the top of the page; they belong at the page foot just before the conclusion to that modernized version. IV. SATIRIC WORLDS AND MODES: I768-I77O

1. See Works, II, 1114. 2. Potter, "Thomas Chatterton's Epistle to the Reverend Mr. Catcott," Modern Language Notes, 39 (1924): 331-338; Lamoine, "La Pensee Religieuse et Ie Suicide de Thomas Chatterton," Etudes Anglaises, 22 (1970): 369-379. 3. See introduction, note 9. 4. See Howard D. Weinbrot, The Formal Strain (Chicago, 1969), chap. 6. 5. The Correspondence of Alexander Pope (Oxford, 1956), ed. George Sherburn, I, 128. 6. Spence, Joseph, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, ed. James M. Osborn (Oxford, 1966), no. 612 (1,254). 7. The pervasiveness of the Churchill influence on the polit­ ical poems was established in some detail by Meyerstein (Life, pp. 326-330).

Notes to pages 182-221

329

8. For a fuller treatment of the changes involved in the Churchillean satiric mode see Thomas F. Lockwood's PostAugustan Satire (Seattle, 1978). 9. Poems Supposed to have been Written at Bristol, pp. 163— 164. 10. Ibid., p. 173n. 11. See Eric W. White, "Chatterton and the English Burletta," Review of English Studies, 9 (1958): 43-48. 12. See previous note. 13. See Ronald Knox, Enthusiasm (New York, 1961), chaps. 20 and 21. 14. See my introduction, quote from Rossetti. 15. Caine, Recollections, p. 189. 16. The mock contention would seem to belong to the Menippean tradition, Symposium subdivision, as blocked out by Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (New York, 1968), pp. 308-312. 17. See Works, II, 1097-1099. The second edition of Treatise was published in 1768. 18. See introduction, note 9. 19. J. H. Ingram, The True Chatterton (London, 1910), pp. 208, 216, discovered in Middlesex Journal two later short polit­ ical satires by Chatterton that, taken together, demonstrate how briskly he could by this time size up and solve lesser satiric problems than those we have been considering. "The Candidates," dated two days after he reached London, is printed as from Bristol, so it may have been updated by Middlesex. Chatterton has learned that the Patriot M.P. Sir Robert Bernard is running unopposed for the prestigious Westminster seat once in the control of the Newcastle faction: see The House of Commons, ed. Lewis Namier and John Brooke (London, 1964), I, 336. He has also learned that three anti-Patriot candidates thought to offer themselves, then backed off. The situation is ripe for Patriot gloating. Chatter­ ton suggests succinctly the aspirations and weaknesses of the supposed candidates contemplated by the Newcastle group and the court and of the self-nominated Sir Charles Farnaby, then shows them all, in a single couplet using the poet's favor-

330

Notes to page 231

ite sun-taper metaphor, completely overwhelmed by Ber­ nard: "Sir Robert comes; all others die away, / Like glimm'ring tapers at approach of day." The half-line appearance of Bernard effectively suggests that his superiority to the others is so manifest as to render argument absurd. The poem is a neat bit of inside-dopester rhetoric. Ingram's second find, "To the Society at Spring Garden" (9 May 1770), praises the Incorporated Society of Artists exhibi­ tion by attacking the rival Royal Academy exhibition pa­ tronized by the king. Chatterton's method here is to suggest that the Royal Academy paintings, having no merit of their own, must derive it from elegant frames and the royal patent, and that the Incorporated Society is lucky to be without this patronage. The poem is an elaboration of an old formula: the man who has X for a friend doesn't need enemies. 20. The two remaining burletta fragments are apparently a part of the summer 1770 effort. "A Burlesque Cantata" is the beginning only of a mock cantata in which, as in the Whitefield ode, the narrative is carried in the recitative. The only air is sung by a Bristol collier to his girl. The narrator's tone is loftily contemptuous. The collier's aria is in Somerset dialect. Presumably at least an aria from the girl, further nar­ rative, and a duet would follow. Though the structure would be like that of the Whitefield ode, the shaping principle would clearly be to parody cantata by using the low subject: mimesis of Bristol low life effects the parody. A similar piece, "The Dustcart Cantata," (1735), was recorded by Intimate Opera on London LPS 293: the genre may have been common musi­ cal fare in the eighteenth century. "Burletta: The Woman of Spirit" does not get beyond part of the second scene. Had it been finished it would have been shaped as a satiric action: a domestic quarrel between an ama­ teur antiquarian-lawyer and his titled wife. Chatterton was clearly intending to make heavy use of his own antiquarian reading and his knowledge of legal terminology. This burletta stands a bit apart from the other libretti in that it uses spoken

Notes to pages 235-302

331

dialogue rather than recitative, the airs are more scattered, and the burlesque coarseness is, as far as the fragment gets, considerably toned down. 21. Thomas Chatterton (Oxford, 1972), p. 16. 22. See introduction, p. 6. 23. The rest of the series is reprinted with other works of doubtful authenticity in Works, II, 699-759. 24. At the end of the sixth and beginning of the seventh Lectures on the English Poets: see Complete Works, ed. P. P. Howe (London, 1930-1934), V, 122-127. 25. See introduction, note 9. V. IMAGINED PLACES AND POETRIES: 1768-177Ο

1. The view of expression and" art here is that of Collingwood in Principles of Art, especially chapters 10-12 and, within them, pp. 247-252 and 273-275. 2. The Idea of History, pp. 218-219; see also pp. 76-81. 3. Specimens of the Poetry of the Ancient Welsh Bards (London, 1764), pp. 7, 109. 4. Britannia, p. 46. 5. See note 3 above. 6. Some Versions of Pastoral (New York, 1960). 7. On the relationship of the songs to the thematic devel­ opment ο{Allla see Rainer Schowerling, "Minstrel's Song," in Die Englische Lyrik (Dusseldorf, 1968), pp. 284-292; and a forthcoming article by Irving N. Rothman in Modem Lan­ guage Notes.

8. Bronson, "Thomas Chatterton," Facets of the Enlighten­ ment, pp. 187-188.

9. Add. MS 5766B, f. 54. Meyerstein, "A Satirical Eclogue by Chatterton," Times Literary Supplement, 12 (July 1943): 488. 10. Ingram, The True Chatterton, p. 200. 11. See Works, II, 1026-1029, 1078-1079, 1123, and Sypher, "Chatterton's African Eclogues and the Deluge," PMLA, 54 (1939): 246fF.

332

Lines

la

Notes to page 307

Action

Digression and Simile

Outside connections

Course of Tiber African annunciation

Catcott's geology Catcott's mythology

Simile: chain of mountains

Catcott's geology

Simile: earthquake

Catcott's geology

Setting: Tiber's banks

lb-20 21-36 37-38 39-46 47a 47b-52 53-56 57-83 84-86 87-90· 91-94 95-116 117-124

The army . . .

strong . . . led by Nicou . . . Nicou's descent from Catcott's mythology Lucifer-Noah type led by Nicou . . . History of shield

Slavery

against his friend Flashback: cause of war Victory, Rorest's death, Nicou's suicide

13. See "Chatterton; Insults and Gifts," pp. 42-43.

INDEX

This index consists of two parts. The first lists Chatterton's writings by short titles. The second includes, selectively, sub­ stantive entries on matters of probable interest to probable readers—subjects, forms, and techniques of Chatterton's art; Chatterton scholarship; authors influencing or influenced by Chatterton; the poet's recurrent personal and thematic preoc­ cupations; and theorists and topics relevant to the method of this book. CHATTERTON'S WRITINGS Acconte of Canynges Feast, The, 148-149,202. Account of the De Berghams, 71-74, 167-169,221. Adventures of a Star, 257, 259. Advice, The, 240-241. Mh, 52, 77, 110, 114-117, 120 123-143,167,187,188,189, 190, 231,284, 289, 290-291, 306; rela­ tion to Othello, 22,123-142,147, 327. African Eclogues, 6, 160, 272, 288, 302-309; sources, 302-303. {See also Death of Nicou, Heccar and Gaira, Narva and Mored.) African Song, An, 288, 308-309. Anodher Mynstrelles Songe (by Gorges), 130-131, 287, 288-289. Amphitryon, 170, 186, 192-195, 228.

Antiquity of Christmas Games, 114-117. Apostate Will, 30, 35, 37-38, 39, 41-42,176, 318-319. Art of Puffing, The, 246-248, 253. Articles ofBelief, The, 173. Astrea Brokage Letter, 241-242, 253.

Battle of Hastings II, 58, 90-104, 157, 162, 187, 203, 272, 293, 324 (2). Batde ofHastynges I, 58, 88, 90-95, 105,133,162,187,203,293, 324 (3). Bridge Narrative, 30, 108, 111, 120, 327. Brief Account, A, 105-107, 153. Bristol Castle, 60, 75. Bristowe Tragedie, 49-50,63,80-89, 94,104-105, 108,109, 111, 118, 120,123(2),306,327. Burlesque Cantata, A, 194, 330.

Candidates, The, 329-330. Canynge-Rowley letters, 143. Cerdick, 274, 277-278. Chorus to Goddwyn, 165-166, 325. Chronycalle of Brystowe, A, 90. Churches of Bristol, 61, 67. Churchwarden, The, 30, 32-37, 41-42,154, 318-319. Clifton, 170, 267, 268-269. Complaint, The, 271-272. Constabiliad, The, 182, 186, 201203, 208-209.

Index

334

Consuliad, The, 186, 201, 208-209, 219. Conversation, 175, 182,186, 198200,200. Copernican System, The, 173-174. Craishes Herauldry, 53, 71, 73, 75, 76. Custom (possibly C's), 317.

Ethelgar, 273, 274, 276-277. Excelente Balade of Charitie, An, 101, 155-159, 272; date of compo­ sition, 155-156,170. Exhibition, The, 186, 201, 217,

Death of Nicou, The, 288, 306-308. Defence, The, 174, 183, 186, 206208. Discorse on Brystowe, A, 22-23, 55 (2), 61, 67, 76-77,115,118,160, 324. documents, Rowleyan, 7, 45-78, 322; distinguished from literary works, 45-46; titles listed, 322323.

Fables for the Court, 320, 321-322. False Step, The, 253. February, 298-299. Four Letters on Warwyke, 143-146. Fullford, the Grave-digger, 30, 32-35,42, 178,285,320.

Eclogue I, 287-288, 291, 292-293. Eclogue II, 287-288, 292, 293-295. Eclogue III, 287-288, 295-296. Elegy I, 297. Elegy II, 271-272. Elegy III, 271-272. Elegy on a Great Genius, 175, 297298, 299. Elegy on Mr. Wm. Smith, 235. Elegy, Stanton Drew, 267, 269-270, 272, 325. Elegy to Phillips, 270-271. Elinoure andjuga, 287-288, 291, 291-292. Englandes Glorye Revyved, 54-55. EnglyshMetamorphosis, 160-162. Entroductionne (to JEWa), 124. Epistle to Catcott, 172, 174, 182183, 184, 186, 206-208, 222/246. Epistle to Clayfield, 182. Epistle to Mastre Canynge, 124, 181,185,186,187-192. Epitaph on Robert Canynge, 327328.

226-228.

Explayneals of the Yellowe Rolle, 55-56.

Genuine Copy of a Letter, 236. Goddwyn, 114,142, 165-66, 175. Godred Crovan, 170, 274, 277-278. Gorthmund, 273, 274, 280-281. Gouler's Requiem, The, 34, 153155, 156, 157. Hag, The, 320, 321-322. Happiness, 186, 200, 204-206. Happy Pair: A Tale, The, 256, 258259. Hardinge, 59-60, 75 (2). Heccar and Gaira, 174, 288, 304-305. Hervenis, 182, 186, 200 (2). Hirlas I, The, 274, 279-280. Hirlas II, The, 274, 275-276, 279. Historie of Payncters, 69-70, 76. Hobbinol and Thyrsis, 175, 299302. Hoyland and Clarke, Baker poems to, 233-234. Hunter of Oddities sketches, 254256,331. Hymn for Christmas Day, A, 30-32, 40, 111, 322. IfWishing for the Mystic Joys, 174. In his wooden Palacejumping (in

Index

Journal 6th), 186,193,195-196, 330. In the merry merye Vale, 327. Intrest, 6,182, 186, 197-198, 200. I've let my Yard, 30, 32-35, 40, 41-42. John Ladgates Answer, 90,187,325. Journal 6th, 6,171 (2), 181-182, 186, 195-196,222. Kenrick, 274, 277. Kew Gardens, 186,193, 209, 213, 214,215,217-221,223. Letter Paraphras'd, The, 242-243. Letter to Mastre Canynge, 124, 181, 185,186,187-192. Lyfe ofW: Canynge, 151, 153. Maria Friendless, 252-253. Memoirs of a Sad Dog, 167,176, 231, 246,256-258, 259, 273-274. Merrie Tricks, The, 114-120,123; al­ ternate title, 116. Methodist, The, 174, 320, 321. Mynstrelles Songe I, 129-130, 284, 287, 288. Mynstrelles Songe II, 130, 284, 287, 288, 295, 327. Mynstrelles Songe III (O! Synge untoe Mie Roundelaie), 134-135, 137, 284, 287, 289. Narva and Mored, 6, 288, 305-306. New Song, A, 238-240. Nowe; rnaie all Helle open (in Historie of Peyncters), 267-268, 272. Ode to Miss Hoyland, 267. Ofthe Auntient Forme of Monies, 54,67,75. On Fitz Hardynge, 151-152, 325. OnRichard 1,66,107,112-113,299.

335 On the Dedication of St. Mary's, 327. On the Immortality of the Soul, 172. On the Last Epiphany, 30-31, 40, 41,107,109,111,322. OnnJohne a Dalbenie, 175. Onne oure Ladies Chirch, 149-150, 156,159. Parlyamente of Sprytes, 52, 77, 114-117,120-123,201-202. A Priest whose Sanctimonious face (inJournal 6th), 195, 320-321. Purple Rolle, 55-56. Resignation, 186,209,215-217,219. Resignation, The, 233, 317-318, 322. Revenge, The, 6,167,186, 217, 228-232. Rolle of Seyncte Bartlemeweis, The, 34,63-66,75-76; relation to Row­ leyan drama, 34,114-117. Romance of the Knight, The, 72, 73, 167-169. Romaunte of the Cnyghte, The, 71, 72,73,90, 167-169,231. Rowleyan eclogues, 187-188,290291. Rowley's Heraldic Account, 66, 151. Ryse of Peyncteynge, The, 67-68, 70, 76. Say, Baker, if Experience hoar (in Journal 6th), 195, 236. Sentiment, 174. Sly Dick, 30, 35, 37-38, 41-42, 318319. Songe of Saincte Werburgh, 107109, 111, 123. Songe of Sayncte Baldwyn, 107109, 111 (2), 123. Songe toe Ella, 107, 109-112, 112

Index

336 Songe toe Ella (cont.) (2), 113 (3), 114,123,187 (2), 325. Stay curyous Traveller, 150, 156. Storie of Wyllyam Canynge, 146148, 153. 'Tis Myst'ry all, in every Sect (in Journal 6th), 195. Three Rowley Letters, 61-63,75 (2); accompanying map, 61-63. To a Friend, 236-237. ToJohn Ladgate, 185,187, 325. To Miss B sh, 272. To Miss Hoyland I, 233-234. To Miss Hoyland VI, 234-235. To Miss Lydia Cotton, 6, 237-238. To Mr. Holland, 170. To the Beauteous Miss Hoyland, 267. To the Society at Spring Garden, 330. Tony Selwood, 255-256. Tournament, The (alternate tide for The Unknown Knyght). Tournament: An Interlude, The, 89, 114,142, 162-165. Unfortunate Fathers, The, 250-252.

Unknown Knyght, 89-90,123,162; alternate title 89. Walpole! I thought not, 184,186, 192. Warre, The, 70, 287,289-291, 295. Whan azure Skie ys veylde (in Historie of Peyncters), 267-268, 272. Whan Battle smetheynge (in The Tournament: An Interlude), 163164. Whanne Sprynge came dauncynge (in Historie of Peyncters), 267268, 272. Where woodbines hang, 267. Whore ofBabylon, The, 186, 209214,215, 217 (2), 218-219, 220. Will, 39 (2), 176, 183, 184,186, 217, 219, 221-226, 246. Williame the Normanne's floure (in The Tournament: An Interlude), 163-164. Woman of Spirit, The, 194, 330-331. Worlde, The, 151-153,156, 157 (2). Yellowe Rolle, 54-55. Ynn auntient Dayes, 87-89, 123; al­ ternate title 87.

GENERAL INDEX iElla, 74,109-112,121,122,123, 126-141. Africa, 272, 302-309, 310, 311. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 274. Aristotle, Poetics, 327. astrology, 238. Bailey, Nathaniel, Dictionary, 73, 74. Baker, John, 53, 195-1%, 232-234, 236, 267, 273, 323. ballad, traditional, 81, 86 (2). Barrett, William, 7, 52, 63-65, 73, 80,96,190, 220, 222, 245, 324.

bawdy, Rowleyan, 118-119, 327. Bible, 74, 159, 205, 210-214, 240, 303 (2),307,317. Blake, William, 4-5,7,9,21, 313. "Holy Thursday," 327. Bloom, Harold, 16, 21, 315. Book of Commdn Prayer, 9,30,42. Boswell, James, 247-248. Brightric, 55, 74, 75. Bristol, 44-46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54-55, 56-59, 60, 64, 77, 84-85, 99-100, 217,218-221,221-226,226-228, 268-269,279-280, 297-298. ( See also topography, Bristol).

337

Index Broderip, Robert, 218, 238-239, 240. Bronson, Bertrand H., 6, 289, 313, 331. Burgum, Henry, 52, 71-74, 76, 167, 197-198, 207, 218, 219, 220, 221223, 225. burlesque, 193, 220. (See also epic, heroic, musical burlesque.) burletta (see musical burlesque). Bute, Stuart1John, 3rd Earl of, 165, 177, 210, 214-216, 217, 249, 300. Butler, Samuel, Hudibras, 36,182, 191. Chaucer Geoffrey, 5, 65 (2), 74, 89, 90, 146-148; Book of the Duchesse, 147; Envoi to Clerk's Tale, 146; Parlement, 201-202; Prologue, 157. Churchill, Charles, 10, 176, 177, 178,181-184,197-202, 204-206, 207-208, 210-217, 219-221, 226, 226-228, 244, 250, 272, 301, 328, 329; compared with Pope, 182184; Apology, 198; Epistle to Hogarth, 184; Prophecy of Famine, 216; Rosciad, 202, 299; The Times, 198. cinematography, verbal, 40, 84-86, 109. Clayfield, Michael, 172, 207, 220. Cohen, Ralph, 16, 313. Coleridge, S. T., 5, 7,19,90 (2). Collingwood, R. G., 15-28,17, 47, 52,265,273,313,314 (6), 315 (3), 316 (2),317,322,331 (2). Collins, Arthur, 74; Baronettage, 72-73, 323; Noble Families, 73. Collins, Emmanuel, 298, 319. Collins, William, 110,220,266,269, 272; Ode on Popular Supersti­ tions, 283; On the Poetical Char­ acter, 307; The Passions, 307; Per­ sian (Oriental) Eclogues, 286-288,

292, 304,305 (2), 306-307; To Evening, 271, 307, 308. Copernican material, 173-174, 215216.

Cotton Lydia, 237-240. couplet, heroic, C's supposed at­ titude toward, 190. Couplet prosody and syntax, 183184. Court and City Magazine, 244, 308. Cowper, William, 184; The Task 220. Crane, Ronald S., 15-28,31,314 (2), 315,316,317(2). credos, C's, 172-174. culinary art, 315, 316. dating of C's work, 317 (2). debates, interrupted, 128-129, 130131, 133,135-136. Decimus letters, C's, 248. Defoe, Daniel; Moll Flanders, 107. density, textural, 84-86, 88 (2), 89 (2), 108.

descriptive poetry (including land­ scape poetry), 10,101-102,153— 158,170,171,179, 200, 235-236, 262-272, 312; aesthetic bases, 265; appeal, 266; C's theory of, 268; history, 265-267; landscapes real and imagined, 264-266; limited repertory, 272; relation to land­ scape poetry, 264-267; relation to painting and music, 263; time motif, 264. didactic-mimetic poems, 143, 149159. didactic shift, 313. dissembling, 38-40, 224-225, 260261.

Dodsley, James, 123,142-143, 245, 300, 327. doomsday allusions, 109, 110, 111, 122,124, 328. drama, C's theory of the history of

338 drama, C's theory (cont.) English, 64-65, 76,114-124. drama, dramatic modes, 114-43, 162-166,192-195, 228-232. dramatic monologue, 33-34, 153155. drawings and maps, Rowleyan, 50, 60,61,62,63. Dryden, John, 42, 74, 87, 90; Am­ phitryon, 194; odes, 31 (3), 41, 110; Religio Laici, 211; Virgil, 86. Dunhelmus Bristoliensis, 324, 325. Dunton, Theodore Watts, 6, 89. Durham, 93, 97, 100. Ecca, 69, 267-268, 272. eclogue format, 151, 286 (see also pastoral). Edmunds, William, 143, 217-218. eighteenth century, C's attitude to­ ward, 77-78,125. Ella, Elle: see Aiila. Elmar, 69, 267-268, 272. empathy, 34,154,161, 305. Empson, William, Some Versions of Pastoral, 43, 284-286, 292, 304, 331. epic, heroic, 114, 179; burlesque epic, 160, 201-203; classical, 86104, 107; classical epic challenged, 81, 85, 8f, 87; English literary epic, 86Π"04; mock epic, mock heroic, 93-94,160 (2), 168-169, 201-203; "native" epic, 80-86. (See also heroes, heroic modes, similes.) epistles, verse, prose, and mixed, 124,171,174,182,185-192,192, 195 (2), 206-208, 221-226, 236243, 262-263, 312. epistolary fiction, 143-146. erotic, 269-270! errors, rationalization of Rowleyan, 54-55, 75, 88.

Index Evans, Evan, Specimens, 274, 275276,278,279,331. Evans1John, Chronological Out­ line, 61, 323. fables, 33-38, 39-43, 195, 320-322. fathers, surrogate, 12, 78, 79,104, 107, 143, 174,177, 207, 231-232, 260-261, 293-294, 303. Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, 30, 32 (3), 108, 204, 224. fictions, prose, 250-260. fictions, satiric, 171, 174, 241-242, 250-260. Fielding, Henry1Joseph Andrews, 159, 258. forgery, as approach to Rowley, 47-49. Freeholder's Magazine, 209, 216, 244. freethinking and libertinism, 40, 171-175,181, 182, 195-196, 204206, 206-208, 212, 226, 232-243, 254. Frye, Northrop, Anatomy, 329. Fuller, Thomas, Church History, 91.

Gay, John, 35; Fables, 9, 30, 34, 36 (3),38,42-43,157,182,246, 318-319, 321; Shepherd's Week, 286; town eclogues, 286; Trivia, 298. genealogy, 51, 53, 71-74, 223. Gibson, Edmund: see Camden, Wil­ liam: Britannia. gluttony, 148-149, 202-203, 234. Goldsmith, Oliver, The Deserted Village, 184, 220, 247-248, 264265, 283. Gorges, Thybbot, 116, 149. Grafton, Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of, 214-216.

Index Grahame, Kenneth;The Wind in the Willows, 107. Gray, Thomas, 266, 269, 272; Elegy, 220, 264-265, 271, 289, 292, 295; Eton College ode, 264; odes, 110, 283; On Lord Holland's Seat, 272. Greenacre, Phyllis, 261, 313. Hamilton, Archibald, 143. Hardy, Thomas, Channel Firing, 290. Harris, Thomas, 222. Hawkesworth, John, 194. Hazlitt, William, 43, 259, 331. heraldry, 54, 66-67,71-72,223. heroes, 260-261; African heroes, 304-309; Rowleyan works as search for, 79; new hero, the be­ neficent man of wealth, 79-80, 82-83,104-107, 114,120-121, 143-159; traditional heroes, 79 (2), 80, 82-85, 90-91, 104,107-114, 114,120-121,126-141,138,159169. (See also epic, heroic modes, ode.) heroic modes, 9, 79-80, 308; Rowleyan works as search for heroic modes, 79-80. (See also epic, di­ dactic poems, lyric, mock-heroic, ode, operatic, heroic play, pastor­ al.) heroic play, 142. Heylyn, Peter, A Help to British History, 55, 67, 74, 274. Hogarth, William, 36, 93. Holinshed, Raphael, Chronicles, 160,274, 278. Holland, Henry Fox, Baron, 216, 300-302. Holmes, Richard, 313, 328. Hoover, Benjamin B., 6, 313. horizons of expectation, literary, 315.

339 hymn, 8,31-32,40 (2), 171. (See also lyric, ode.) influence, problem of, 12, 23-25, 315-316,316. Ingram5J. H., 300, 329-330, 331. Iscam7John a, 115-117,149. Jauss, Hans Robert, 15-16, 28, 314 (3),315(3),316(2),317. Jeffers, Robinson, 283. John, Abbot, 66-70, 113, 151 (2), 289-290. Johnson, Samuel, 214, 262, 266, 267, 274, 298-299, 300; Drury Lane Prologue, 298; False Alarm, 211,214, 298; Rambler, 252. Joyce, James, 77. Junius, 209,244,248. Keats1John, 4-5, 6, 7, 9, 289, 313. Kew, 217, 218, 219. Knox, Ronald, 329. Lambert, John, 219-220, 225. Lamington1John, 75,117-119,122 (2). Lamoine1 Georges, 171, 328. landscape poetry: see descriptive poetry. Ianx satura: see satiric miscellany Leland1John1 Itinerary, 49, 55, 59-60, 60, 74, 75, 323. Lindop, Grevel1235,331. Lockwood1 Thomas F., 329. love poetry and prose, 8, 53, 171, 174,175,232-243. Lydgate1John1 325. lyric modes: varieties, 31, 32, 40, 107-116; lyric shift, 313. (See also hymn, ode, praise, songs.) Maclean, Norman, 111, 317. Macpherson1 James: see Ossian.

340 Madox, Thomas, Formulare Anglicanum, 73. maps, Rowleyan, 50, 62. marketplace writings, 8, 243-260. mechanical combat, problem for C, 89, 90-92,94,96-97,98,101,102, 203. medieval revival, 9, 86, 109. Methodism, 38,39 (2), 186, 193196,321. Meyerstein, E. H. W., Life of Chatterton,passim; other writings, 6, 300, 313,318-319,331. middle class, C's attitude toward, 39, 119,146,150,151-153,153155, 203, 213, 241, 251-252, 253254. Middlesex Journal, 217, 219, 244, 329-330. Milles, Jeremiah, Poems Supposed to Have Been Written at Bristol, 158, 187, 190, 328, 329 (2). minstrels' songs: see songs. misers: see money. mock aria, 33-35, 40, 113. (See also musical forms, qualities, effects.) mock contention, 182, 185, 186, 201-203, 208-209, 226-228, 329. mock elegy, 170, 297-299. mock-heroic: see epic, mock. mock pastoral: see pastoral. mock will, 221, 224. Moderator (C's anti-Patriot signa­ ture), 249. modes, Iiterary: as conceived in this study, 7, 14-15, 27-28, 316. money, 34, 38-40,106-107,143-159, 221-222. musical burlesque, 170, 174, 182, 186,192-194, 228-232, 330-331. (See also mock aria, ode.) musical forms, qualities, effects, concerns, 193. (See also hymn, mock aria, musical burlesque,

Index

ode, operatic, oratorio, prosody, songs.) narrative, narrative modes, 31, 35-36, 80-86, 86-104, 105-107, 109, 143-146,155-159,161-162, 163,167-168,196, 250-253, 256260, 273-283. Newton, Thomas, 210-211, 213, 250. North, Frederick, Lord, 211, 212 (2), 214-216. ode, kinds and forms, 31,107-114, 121,123(2),141,151,163-164, 166, 270, 325; development, 111; mock musical ode, 193, 195-196. (See also heroic modes, hymn, lyric, musical, operatic.) O'Hara, Kane, Midas, 193-194. operatic qualities, 108,127,136, 140-142. (See also musical forms.) Oppel, Horst, 323. oratorio, 308. Ossian, Ossianics, 4-5, 144, 160, 170, 262-263,273-284, 311-312; analogous to Rowley, 274-275, 282; interpretive problem, 273274, 276-277, 283-284; parodies, 273-274; sources, 276. pageantry and procession, 82-86, 89 (2),107-109,111,116,120-121, 151-153. parody, 296-297, 299-302. (See also mock entries, Ossianic parodies, pastoral, mock.) pastoral, 10, 129-131, 235-236, 262-263, 272, 284-311; affinities with heroic, 284, 297, 302, 304; breaking bounds, 305-308, 309, 310; didactic impulse, mimetic form, 284-285; eighteenthcentury sense of mode, 285-286;

Index mock pastoral, 33-35, 285, 296302; mode of thought, 284; poet as swain, 297, 302. pederasty, 198, 200,212. Percy, Thomas, Reliques, 49, 81, 86, 87. Phillips, Thomas, 182,198,270-271. picaresque: drama, 118; fiction, 256-259. Picasso, Pablo, 3, 313. poetic diction, 266-267. poetry, C's imaginary history of British and English, 90, 160, 167-168, 274, 277, 278, 325. ( See also prosody, C's imaginary his­ tory ofEnglish.) political letters, 177, 248-250. politics, C's, 40,171, 175-177. politics, Patriot, 165-166, 171, 175, 208-209, 209-221,223, 248-250, 329-330. Pope, Alexander, 9-10, 41, 68, 74-76,124 (2), 156,177-181, 182 (2), 185-192, 204, 206-207, 220, 312; compared with Churchill, 182-184; Dunciad, 248; Epistle to Arbuthnot, 178,183 (2), 187 (2), 188,189 (2), 190,222, 235; Epistle to Augustus, 178, 179,183,187, 189 (2); Essay on Criticism, 179, 180, 187,188, 189 (2), 191; Essay on Man, 153, 179, 180, 188 (2), 197-198; Homer, 86, 91, 92, 93 (2), 96, 97, 324; Moral Essays, 80, 129, 178, 180, 208; Rape of the Lock, 129, 199, 242; Universal Prayer, 83; Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, 235; Windsor Forest, 264. Popper, Karl, 18-19, 315. Potter, George R., 171, 328. praise, poems of: kinds: 232-233. Princess Dowager of Wales, 177, 210-214, 216, 217-218, 219, 249.

34ί Prior, Matthew, 36 (2), 236. prosody, 124; C's imaginary history ofEnglish prosody, 89-90, 114, 122-123,160,167-168, 325; C's earliest, 41, 86; development of Rowleyan prosody, 87 (2), 88, 89-90, 94, 108,109, 111-112,113 (2),116(3),117,120,122,125, 146,149,150 (2),150-151,153, 162,163,164,166, 296, 325-326; in "modern" poems, 189-90, 230, 270, 304, 308. (See also couplet.) rape (or illicit love) scenes, 126, 135-136, 167-168, 231-232. reception and impact: as aesthetic and as basis for literary history, 314. Redcliff, 23,51,54-55,56-59,61-63, 87-88,106. religion, C's, 31-32,40 (2), 171-175, 206-208, 223, 317, 317-318, 322. (See also freethinking and liber­ tinism.) Richard of Cirencester, 146, 328. Richtcr, Helene, 318. Riffaterre, Michael, 16, 316. Robin Hood, 117,327. Robinson, Henry Crabb, 6, 313. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 5-6, 9, 177, 197-198, 230-231, 238, 259, 329. Rothman, Irving N., 331. Rowley, Thomas, 104-107. Rowleyan language, 45, 46, 48-50, 60, 67, 73, 75, 85-86, 87, 88, 94, 101,109(2),112,113 (2),120, 125, 154-155. Rowleyan works, 52, 222; those ul­ timately acknowledged by C, 81, 88, 105. Rowleyan world, 44-78, 85, 311— 312; C's attitude toward, 44, 45-49, 77; developing idea, 44-78; psychological significance, 45.

342 Rumsey, Polly (Maria), 53,240-241, 258. St. Mary Redcliff Church, 87-88, 118-122, 164-165. Saintsbury, George, 6, 89,113, 289. satires, topical, 174, 185, 186, 197198,198-200, 200, 204-206, 209221. satires, verse, 174, 177, 184-230, 186 (modal and chronological chart). (See also satires, topical and epis­ tles .) satiric miscellanies, 32-35,195, 221-226. satiric modes: verse, prose, mixed, 8, 170-261. (See also epistles; fa­ bles; fictions, satiric; love poetry and prose; musical forms; satires, topical; satires, verse; satiric mis­ cellanies; various mock entries.) Savage, Richard, 212; London and Bristol Compared, 200. Schowerling, Rainer, 331. Scots, Scotland, 165, 216, 281. Scriblerus Club, 23. (See also Canynge-Rowley circle.) Scudder1H. H., 54, 323. Shakespeare, William, 74, 76, 125, 324; Hamlet, 135; 1 2 3 Henry VI, 146-147; Macbeth, 274, 281; Othello, 22, 123-142, 147, 327. similes, epic, 93-94, 97, 98 (2), 101-

102. Skeat, Walter, 4, 67, 318. Smith, William, 44, 206, 208, 235. Smollett, Tobias, 184, 259; Hum­ phry Clinker, 80, 216; Adventxires of an Atom, 259. songs, minstrels: yEIla, 129-131, 331; The Tournament, 163-165, 166. sources, question of, 23-25,139-140, 315-316,316.

Index Southey, Robert and Joseph Cottle, Works of Chatterton, 254. Speed, John, Historie, 274, 281. Speght, Thomas, Works of Chaucer, 65. Spence, Joseph, Observations, 181, 328. Spenser, Edmund, 74, 86, 87, 146; Faerie Queene, 165; Shepeardes Calendar, 301. Sterne, Laurence, 184; Tristram Shandy, 258-259. Stonehenge, 92-93, 96, 97, 101-102, 272, 324. Stow, John, Annales, 98, 160, 274. suicide: threats, allusions, question of C's, 4, 219-20, 221-226, 251252, 328. Swift1Jonathan, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, (3), 226; Descriptions, 298; On Poetry, 199; Tale of a Tub, 248. Sypher, Wylie, 302, 331. Taylor, D. S., 313 (2), 314,315,332. Thistlethwaite, James, 39. Thomas, Dylan, Fern Hill, 264. Thompson, William, Gondibert and Birtha, 125. topography: African, 305-306; Bris­ tol, 44-45, 50, 51, 56-57, 59-60, 60, 61-63,64, 74-75,77,84, 87-88, 106, 108,109, 110, 120122, 146, 160-162; Ossianic, 275, 283. (See also descriptive poetry, Stonehenge.) Town and Country Magazine, 155, 176, 244, 248, 253, 254, 256-257, 257,271,297, 299. Turgot, 22,54, 58-59, 74 (2), 93,98, 100, 103, 160, 324. Tyrwhitt, Thomas, 3-4. Tyson, William, 318. venereal disease, 64-65,76,152,156, 223, 227-228, 328.

Index Walpole, Horace, 4, 48, 52, 66-71, 76, 112,151,170, 192, 240, 243244, 245,267; Anecdotes ofPainting, 66-67. Warton, Thomas, 3-4. Weber, C., 323. WeevertJohn, Funerall Monuments, 114-117, 117 (2),325. Weil, Simone, 324. Weinbrot, Howard D., 328, Welsh motifs and poetry, 92-93, 98, 274, 279-280, 324 (2). Werburgh, St., 74, 75, 87-88,107109. Wesley, John, 38. (See also Methodism.) White, Eric, 194, 329.

343 Whitefield, George, 195-196. (See also Methodism.) Wilkes, John, 175, 177, 213, 249; North Briton, 223. Wimsatt, W. K., 16, 23, 316. witchcraft, 216. women: anxiety concerning, 237, 242-243; honesty about own at­ titudes, 238-240; jealousy, 126127,137-139; prostitutes, 252-253; rakish approach, 236-243; senti­ mental approach, 233-234; threat of, 105-107; treatment of, 231— 232. (See also love poetry and prose.) Wordsworth, William, 4-5, 9 (2), 177, 263; Prelude, 22-221; Tintern Abbey, 264.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Taylor, Donald S Thomas Chatterton's art. Includes bibliographical references and index. Chatterton, Thomas, 1752-1770—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Imaginary histories—History and criticism. I. Title. PR3344.T3 821'.6 78-51200 ISBN 0-691-06375-3